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THAN KSGIVING 
SERMONS 



"By 

Edwin Holt Hughes, D. D., LL. D. 

One of the Bishops of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church. 



If 



CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AN j GRAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 



I^^u* 



t^" 



Copyright. 1909, 
By Jennings and Graham 



53*=- 



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DEDICATION 

To the Dear Friends to Whom the Substance of these 
Messages was First Delivered, the Congregations of 
the Newton Center Methodist Episcopal Church 
and the Center Methodist Episcopal Church, 
Maiden, Mass., with the Author's Thanks- 
giving for Their Fellowship and Serv- 
ice in the Gospel of Christ. 



CONTENTS 



Preface, . - - - 7 

I. The Thankfulness of a Law Giver 

Thanksgiving for the Land, - - 15 

II. The Thankfulness of a Seer 

Thanksgiving for Life's Variety, - 43 

III. The Thankfulness of a Psalmist 

Thoughtfulness and Thankfulness, - 63 

IV. The Thankfulness of a Prophet 

Thanksgiving for the Coming Order, 89 

V. The Thankfulness of the Savior 

The Complete Thanksgiving, - - 113 

VI. The Thankfulness of a Pharisee 

The Perversion of Thanksgiving, - 139 

VII. The Thankfulness of an Apostle 

1. Thanksgiving FOR Human Fellowship, 161 

2. Thanksgiving for Inner Strength, 184 

3. Thanksgiving for Service, - - 210 

VIII. The Final Cause of Thanksgiving 229 

5 



PREFACE 

The sermons in this volume were all, with 
one exception, preached in the course of reg- 
ular pastorates. They carry the marks of 
direct address, and have not been designed 
primarily with a view to research or argu- 
ment. They are based upon a faith in a good 
God. No attempt is made to prove God's 
existence or God's kindness. The discourses 
are appeals rather than treatises. 

Inasmuch as the sermons all deal with 
one general theme and were preached usually 
one year apart, memory did not hold fully 
the message of the preceding year, and there 
is naturally some repetition. Where the re- 
peated part enters necessarily into the sub- 
stance of the later sermon, it is allowed to 
remain; otherwise it is omitted. Save for 
changes of this kind, and the droppiQg of 

7 



8 PREFACE 

local and temporary references, the sermons 
are printed quite largely in their original 
forms. The preacher who writes his ser- 
mons with due care composes enough ma- 
terial for a book every three months ! This 
would make forty volumes in ten years ! The 
enduring classics are not gotten in this 
wholesale fashion! The chapters in this 
book claim to be sermons— nothing more. 

The volume will reveal the author's con- 
ception of the Thanksgiving Festival. He 
admits readily that his treatment of the day 
is unusual. He acknowledges his dissatis- 
faction with the method that uses the holi- 
day almost solely for the discussion of na- 
tional problems and the recital of national 
events. All of us have heard Thanksgiving 
sermons about national problems that did 
not make us thankful; and we have listened 
to sermons about national events that were 
modified Fourth of July orations liberally 
sprinkled with the name of God. The mes- 
sages of this volume start from the thought 



PREFACE 9 

that the day is personal. Even in the two 
sermons which deal with the nation we have 
held to ideas that bear closely on the indi- 
vidual life. 

The author is aware that Thanksgiving 
Day is a national holiday. In some form it 
has existed in the nation almost from the 
beginning. In 1621 Grovernor Bradford 
made provision for a day of rejoicing after 
the gathering of the first harvest by the 
New England colonists. In 1623 a drought 
prevailed, and a day of fasting was ap- 
pointed. The rain came while prayers were 
rising, and the day was promptly changed 
to one of thanksgiving. The governors of 
the colonies fixed the custom for our people. 
During the Revolutionary War, Congress 
annually recommended a day of thanksgiv- 
ing. In 1864 President Lincoln sent forth a 
proclamation for a national thanksgiving, 
and the example of the Great Commoner has 
been followed by all of his successors in the 
Presidency. 



10 PREFACE 

MucH that is written in these sermons 
would be appropriate for any public service 
of praise. Each holiday has a constant 
meaning. The incarnation is true for every 
day; the resurrection touches all time. So 
Thanksgiving Day has its message for all 
other days even as it gathers its message 
from all other days. If some shall say that 
the volume does not deal specifically with 
thanksgiving for the unspeakable gift of 
God's Son, and for the gift of eternal life 
through Him, we shall remind them that this 
book is one of a series, and that personal 
courtesy, together with the desire to keep 
Thanksgiving Day from trenching upon the 
prerogative of other holidays, has forbidden 
the definite treatment of these themes. 

If any shall claim that the history of the 
day gives it a national character and makes 
only civic themes appropriate for the pub- 
lic service, we shall not quarrel with that 
conception. We shall insist simply that the 
day has a personal mission and that we 



PREFACE 11 

bring failure to its observance unless our 
hearers are led in humble gratitude to the 
Most High. In any event, since the Festival 
is sure to abide with us, it becomes the duty 
of ministers to treat it with all seriousness 
and to save it from that formality of which, 
as the Old Testament assures us, God grows 
weary. When God becomes weary of the 
Day, the people will grow weary too. Like 
Him, they crave reality. These sermons are 
an indirect plea that Thanksgiving Day be 
kept true to itself. Therein lies its salva- 
tion. If the messages in this book shall dig- 
nify and strengthen the day in any heart or 
in any community, the author shall have his 
sufficient reward. Edwin H. Hughes. 



THE THANKFULNESS OF A LAW 
GIVER 



THANKSGIVING FOR THE LAND 

Text: ''The land which the Lord thy God 
giveth thee/'—'Eix, xx, 12. 

Thanksgiving day is appointed by 

the head of the nation. The proclamation 
of the President of the Eepublic is usually 
followed by the proclamations of the govern- 
ors of the various States. Inasmuch as the 
day came to us out of the stress of the Col- 
ony in 1621, and was nationalized by the 
stress of war in 1864, it is often treated as a 
civic day. The Fourth of July is supposed 
to deal more with the human side of the na- 
tional life, while Thanksgiving Day recog- 
nizes the hand of God in our history. In the 
mind of the believer there is no conflict be- 
tween these two conceptions, as we shall later 
observe. Perhaps our gratitude for the na- 

15 



16 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

tion will be most deeply stimulated if, instead 
of reviewing tlie mercies of a single year, 
we deal to-day with some broad faith as to 
the relation of God to our whole life as a 
people. 

'^The God of nations" is one of the fixed 
phrases of speech. Somehow a nation has 
always seemed something so vast and pre- 
cious as to justify placing it immediately un- 
der the care of God. The timidity that hesi- 
tates to say that God counts the hairs of 
our heads is changed to boldness in the pres- 
ence of great national movements. **The 
Battle Hymn of the Eepublic" did not daunt 
the faith of our people when it came out 
of that awful epoch in the last century. Men 
of all creeds found themselves singing: 

* ' I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred cir- 
cling camps ; 
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews 

and damps ; 
I can read His righteous sentence in the dim and 
flaring lamps ; 

His day is marching on.** 



THE LAW GIVEE IT 

This was the confession that God in some 
real way was in that splendid and sacrificial 
era of our national life. 

Now the text puts this view into a sweep- 
ing statement. The land is a gift of God— 
*'the land which the Lord thy God giveth 
thee. ' ' The word was spoken to the Israel- ' 
ites. It occurs again and yet again in the 
Old Testament. It was the refrain of ancient 
patriotism. We find it first in a place of 
great dignity and moment. It worked its 
way from the heart of the Lawgiver and 
claimed room in the Ten Commandments. It 
has thus been oft repeated through many cen- 
turies. Men and women and little children 
have recited the law, *^ Honor thy father and 
thy mother, that thy days may he long upon 
the land which the Lord thy God giveth 
thee.*' God and Home and Native Land are 
here in the company of this one Command- 
ment. 

But the part of the Commandment which 
relates to the land is likely to be overlooked. 



18 THANKSGIVINa SERMONS 

We must admit that it is not tlie main word 
of this fifth Law ; yet we must allow that God 
dignified the thought of the nation when He 
brought it into association with the home 
and with Himself. A new revelation comes 
to us when once this phrase leaps from the 
page and shines before us with a sacred 
meaning, * * The land which the Lord thy God 
giveth thee." Our primary thought has 
rested upon the honor due to fathers and 
mothers; our secondary thought has occu- 
pied itself with the promise of long life ; and 
we may hasten through this meaningful 
word about the land without noting that it 
carries with itself the name of God. But 
some day it halts us with this truth, '^God 
gives the land.'' We find ourselves waiting 
before the words that we may get their im- 
port. Thereafter the land partakes of the 
majesty and goodness of God; patriotism is 
purged of certain lower elements; and civic 
duty fits itself into an infinite plan and gets 
its inspiration straight from the Most High. 



THE LAW GIVEE 19 

It may be profitable, then, on this Thanks- 
giving Day to give a more emphatic meaning 
to this slighted phrase in order that it may 
have a sure place in our hearts. 

An interesting parallel may be drawn be- 
tween the Israelitish nation and our own — 
between the Jews and the Puritans. Both 
revolted against what they deemed slavery; 
both sought out a strange land; both sup- 
planted a native people ; both labored under 
a profound sense of God; both were the 
means of matchless blessings to the world. 
If any one shall wish to urge that both en- 
tertained some dark ideas of theologj^ and 
indulged occasionally in doubtful temper and 
conduct, we shall not deny the mournful re- 
semblance; we shall urge only that people 
are to be tested by the standards of their 
age and, also, that it is some evidence of the 
almightiness of God that He accomplished so 
much by such imperfect agents! Inasmuch 
as both nations came to their separateness 
by way of a spiritual conviction, it was nat- 



20 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

ural tliat the devout among both peoples 
should relate the beginnings of the land to 
the goodness of God and the continuance of 
the land to His purpose. The text carries 
both meanings. If the land is God's gift, 
then the land has God's intent fixed in its 
life. So it comes to pass that our gratitude 
and our responsibility meet in the text, * ' The 
land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." 
All this is general. We may go on to 
make some particular applications of the 
faith. We say ^^faith," because our view- 
point is a matter of real faith. If a man 
shall say that the land is not a gift, we can 
do nothing more than to ask him whence it i 
came! If he shall say that the significant 
human life in the land has been made by 
men and "shall fall in with Carlyle's idea in 
** Heroes and Hero-Worship, " we may ask 
him whence came the men! If he shall say 
again that certain whirling and nameless 
forces worked out the mighty continent and 
developed the mighty men, we shall tell him 

.1" 



THE LAW GIVEE 21 

that the forces did very well indeed and are 
entitled to great credit! After all, atheism 
puts some dreadful strains on the mental 
life. This word about God's relation to the 
land has satisfaction for the intellect ; but it 
is mainly a word of faith. The believer finds 
that from whatever standpoint he may con- 
sider his country, his mind and his heart 
jointly find God. 

In her earlier life Harriet Martineau 
wrote a devotional book. In later life she 
claimed to become an atheist. One day she 
was visited by a lady whom she invited out 
into her garden. The flowers were bloom- 
ing in beauty and profusion. Pointing to 
the flowers, Miss Martineau said, *^Who 
wouldn't be grateful for blessings such as 
these?" The lady quickly replied, ^^ Grate- 
ful to whom, Miss Martineau, on your the- 
ory T' The reply was, '^Ah, you have me 
there!"* It was a passing incident, but it 
touched the problem of life. Faith holds to 

*'* James Martineaa," Jackson, p. 14. 



22 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

the literal statement that each flower in that 
garden was the gift of God. It moves on to 
the larger confession that the whole land was 
11 His gift. ^^In the beginning God"— this is 
the opening word of the Bible, and it is the 
opening word of the earth. If the land came 
out of chaos, ont of the mist and star dust, 
ont of aeons of fire and cold, it is the gift 
of God. If it came by one swift act of cre- 
ative power, it is still God's gift. *'The sea 
is His, and He made it; and His hands 
formed the dry land." **The strength of 
the hills is His also." The processes by 
which the treasures of gold and silver, and 
iron and stone, were packed beneath the 
mountains are of God. The plans by which 
the fading harvests of unnumbered years 
dropped back into the earth, with the added 
enrichment won from the air, and made layer 
after layer of black fertility, are God's plans. 
We must ever return to the Hebrew concep- 
tion. God's gift is august. When the ma- 
terialist reminds us that life comes back for 



THE LAW GIVEE 23 

its sustenance to the earth, as to the natural 
base of supplies, we shall not be quick to 
deny his claim; but we shall give the praise 
to God for His good gift of the earth. The 
stress of the materialist is, in a sense, a 
tribute to the excellence of God's gift. Even 
though some may deem the claim a crude one, 
faith sees this matchless territory lying be- 
tween the two great oceans, not as a mag- 
nificent accident, nor yet as a necessitated 
formation moving out from insensate forces, 
but rather as a free gift. The broad domain 
is 'Hhe land which the Lord thy God giveth 
thee." 

When we move upward into a higher 
realm of consideration the same thought fol- 
lows. The effective discovery of this conti- 
nent was timed by the All- Wise. Long be- 
fore Columbus discovered America the 
Northmen landed upon our shores. Yet 
somehow the glory of the discovery has never 
been given to them. They went away and 
left the land sleeping upon the bosom of the 



24 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

seas. God was not yet ready to turn tMs 
continent over to tlie hands of a new people. 
When its second and vital discovery came 
it did not come by any direct device of man. 
Columbus did not start out to find a new 
land; he started out to find a path to an old 
land. The lesson that he grasped as he ran 
his finger around the handle of the legendary 
hoe was that there might be a path through 
the seas to the Indies. He went forth to 
find that path. He did not dream that a 
huge continent would intercept his travel. 
Instead of a way through the seas, he found 
a world amid the seas. Joaquin Miller, in 
his poem which pays tribute to the courage 
of Columbus, writes thus: 

"They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow. 

Until at last the scared mate said : 
' Why, now not even God would know 

Should I and all my men fall dead ; 
These very winds forget their way, 

For God from these dread seas is gone. 
Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say,*- 

He said : * Sail on, sail on, and on.' ** 



THE LAW GIVER 25 

But God was not gone from those dread 
seas. They were His seas, the place of His 
own habitation. The pilot of that vessel was 
God. He knew the path. 

It is not necessary now to recite the nsual 
arguments. It is enough to say that the dis- 
covery came at the opening of the great mod- 
ern period, and that it was accompanied 
shortly by inventions and migrations that 
gave the event strange effect. This much is 
surely true : Had some wise man deliberately 
timed the discovery of this continent to make 
it ready for the great uses of humanity, he 
could have made no finer choice of dates. 
But the white man found the land when he 
was not looking for the land. It was as if 
the Almighty had thrust before him a won- 
derful territory, bearing fruits and flowers, 
carrying on its shoulders splendid forests, 
hiding beneath its garments treasures for 
centuries of use, and had said to a startled 
race, **This is the land which the Lord thy 
God giveth thee.'' The discovery of Amer- 



26 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

ica came from tlie choice of God, or it came 
from no choice at all. We are not likely to 
dignify our history by starting it from the 
freak of chance rather than from the plan 
of Providence. When Colnmbus knelt upon 
the shore and prayed, ere he lifted up the 
cross, he was true to the meaning of his un- 
expected discovery. It was a time for the 
giving of thanks, as it was likewise a time 
for the consecration of a new world. 

Much of the same line of suggestion ap- 
plies to the constitutional basis of the coun- 
try. As we found the land when we did not 
start out to find it, so did we make a govern- 
ment when we did not begin with such a 
large intention. Some of our principles 
were worked out ere the nation became a 
political unit. State Churches and Eepublics 
do not usually live together happily. The 
Puritans purposed to unite Church and 
State. God did not allow their purpose to 
succeed. Many of them meant to be strictly 
loyal to the Church of England. It is said 



THE LAW GIVEE 27 

that when Higginson left the mother country 
he stood on the stern of the ship and said, 
as he waved his hands to the receding shores : 
^^ We will not say, as the Separatists are wont 
to say at their leaving of England, * Fare- 
well, Babylon! Farewell, Rome!' but we 
will say, ^Farewell, dear England! Fare- 
well, the Church of God in England !' We do 
not go to New England as separatists from 
the Church of England, but we go to practice 
the positive part of Church government." 
In Virginia an actual alliance existed be- 
tween Church and State, and this continued 
to the very eve of the Revolution. The pur- 
pose of Higginson and his colleagues was 
foiled with reference to the Church. His 
platform must have appeared strange to his 
descendants of the third generation. The , 
Puritan was destined to become an independ- 
ent in his conception of Church government. 
He did not intend to have it so. Even 
though he himself protested in England, in 
the new land he was an advocate of a dif- 



28 THANKSaiVING SERMONS 

f erent type of conformity. But God hurried 
him on to a more liberal and spiritual con- 
ception of the Church. Independence won 
in ecclesiastical life— both in Massachusetts 
and in Virginia. 

So was it with reference to political gov- 
ernment. It was not in the minds of our 
forefathers to found a separate nation. 
They dreamed only of a perpetual colony 
for England. They were loyal to the king, 
even when he acted like a madman. They 
suffered long ere they broke the ties that 
held them to England. Twenty-five years 
prior to the beginning of the Revolution, 
Parliament had already passed twenty-nine 
different acts intended to put the colonists at 
a disadvantage and to cast premiums into 
the hands of British manfacturers and mer- 
chants.* Men often speak as if the Stamp 
Act and the tax on tea were lonely outrages ; 
but they were simply culminations of many 
similar laws. The colonists entered upon 

•" The War for Independence," Flske, p. 43. 



THE LAW GIVER 29 

their struggle without a diffused sentiment 
for independence. Some think that Otis and 
the Adamses saw the certain issue, and that 
they worked deliberately and from the first 
toward the goal of a separate and republican 
national life. But there is nothing to indi- 
cate that James Otis, when he resigned the 
crown office of advocate-general and gave up 
its lucrative salary rather than to defend 
' the revenue demands of England, and at 
once became attorney without fee for the 
Boston merchants, saw the end from the be- 
ginning; and it was a long time from the 
day when John Adams heard Otis 's eloquent 
speech ere he declared that on that day * * the 
child Independence was born." The colo- 
nists went into a war for justice— and they 
won Independence ! The victory was far be- 
yond their most glowing expectations. God 
thrust them out to become a separate nation 
with a peculiar mission. Directly they 
awoke to find in their hands a Constitution. 
We say that George Washington was **the 



\ < 



30 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

father of his country." In this case, as in 
the case of the individual, the fatherhood 
reaches back to God. 

This takes us to another consideration. 
A nation is something deeper than territory, 
deeper also than a constitution. A land is 
not made up merely of valleys and moun- 
tains and prairies, and rivers and lakes and 
gulfs ; nor is it merely a bundle of laws and 
codes. Territory and constitution get their 
national meaning only in souls. Whatever 
has been given to this land of moral and 
spiritual glory is of God. Take out of our 
land what has come into it because of the 
God-fearing spirit of our people, and you 
mutilate a splendid history and leave a poor 
and barren substitute. You dry up, even 
if you do not foul, the springs of our na- 
tional life. Leave out God, and you have no 
Mayflower to launch. The breezes that 
pushed that ship over the ocean came from 
God; and the impulse that was in the hearts 
of its passengers came from God. Our his- 



THE LAW GIVER 31 

tory took its first steps at the door of tlie 
Chiircli of God. The Declaration of Inde- 
pendence puts the name of God into its pre- 
amble; and it comes to its conclusion by 
speaking of ''a firm reliance on the protec- 
tion of Divine Providence." God entitles us 
to a certain standing; God has made certain 
rights inalienable; God will protect us— after 
all, there was much religion in the beginning 
of our nation. It looks as if the signers of 
the historic Declaration would have agreed 
with the word, This is **the land which the 
Lord thy God giveth thee." 

Possibly some may intimate that since 
men had heroic parts in bringing us to a sep- 
arate national life, we do not need to speak 
of God. Here reappears the old idea that 
we get rid of God when we admit that He 
has agents I When life is lifted to some high 
power we do not yield to any such hetero- 
doxy. The history of Thanksgiving Day is 
itself an illustration. President Lincoln 
gave out the first Presidential proclamation 



32 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

for the national observance of the last 
Thursday in November as a Day of Thanks- 
giving. This proclamation was dated Oc- 
tober 20, 1864. But that Proclamation of 
Thanksgiving was not the only one given 
out from the Executive Mansion in that year. 
Three others were given forth under the 
same date, September 3d. One gave thanks 
to God ; two gave thanks to men. The thanks 
to men were offered for the very same events 
that had called forth the Proclamation of 
Thanksgiving to God. So significant are 
these coincident proclamations that it is 
worth our while to hear them in full in this 
service.* Here is the one that notes the hu- 
man side of the victories on land: 

''Executive Mansion, 
September 3, 1864. 

' ' The national thanks are tendered by the 
President to Major-General William T. 
Sherman and the gallant officers and soldiers 

♦"Messages and Papers of the President," Vol. VI, pp. 
238-23iJ. 



THE LAW GIVER 33 

of his command before Atlanta for the dis- 
tinguished ability, courage, and perseverance 
displayed in the campaign of Georgia, which 
under divine favor has resulted in the cap- | 
ture of the city of Atlanta. The marches, 
battles, sieges, and other military operations 
that have signalized this campaign must ren- 
der it famous in the annals of war and have 
entitled those who have participated therein 
to the applause and thanks of the nation. 
'* Abraham Lincoln." 

In this proclamation God has His place; 
'* under divine favor," our martyred Presi- 
dent said. Then he gives out another call, 
tendering thanks to men, but slipping in the 
words ^^ under the blessing of Providence:" 

'* Executive Mansion, 

September 3, 1864. 

* * The national thanks are tendered by the 

President to Admiral Farragut and Major- 

General Canby for the skill and harmony 

with which the recent operations in Mobile 

Harbor and against Fort Powell, Fort 
3 



34 THANKSGIVINa SEEMONS 

Gaines, and Fort Morgan were planned 
and carried into execution; also to Ad- 
miral Farragut and Major Granger, un- 
der whose immediate command they were 
conducted, and to the gallant commanders 
on sea and land, and to the sailors and 
soldiers engaged in the operations, for their 
energy and courage, which, under the bless- 
ing of Providence, have been crowned with 
brilliant success and have won for them the 
applause and thanks of the nation. 

'* Abraham Liitcoln'." 

*'ExECUTr^E Maitsion", 
Washington, September 3, 1864. 
''The signal success that Divine Provi- 
dence has recently vouchsafed to the opera- 
tions of the United States fleet and army in 
the harbor of Mobile, and the reduction of 
Fort Powell, Fort Gaines, and Fort Morgan, 
and the glorious achievements of the army 
under Major-General Sherman in the State 
of Georgia, resulting in the capture of the 



THE LAW GIVER 35 

city of Atlanta, call for devout acknowledg- 
ment to the Supreme Being, in whose hands 
are the destinies of nations. It is therefore 
requested that on next Sunday, in all places 
of public worship in the United States, 
thanksgiving be offered to Him for His 
mercy in preserving our national existence 
against the insurgent rebels who so long 
have been waging a cruel war against the 
Government of the United States for its 
overthrow ; and also that prayer be made for 
the divine protection to our brave soldiers 
and their leaders in the field, who have so 
often and so gallantly periled their lives in 
battling with the enemy, and for blessing and 
comfort from the Father of Mercies to the 
sick, wounded, and prisoners, and to the or- 
phans and the widows of those who have 
fallen in the service of their country; and 
that He will continue to uphold the Govern- 
ment of the United States against all the ef- 
forts of public enemies and secret foes. 
'^Abkaham Lincoln." 



36 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

These proclamations are worthy of a per- 
manent place in the literature of Thanksgiv- 
ing, not only because one of them marks the 
beginning of a national institution, but, even 
more, because they express a confident faith 
in the God who worked through men in sav- 
ing the nation. They do not discuss the mys- 
tery of man's partnership. They put divine 
terms into the human thanksgiving and hu- 
man terms into the divine thanksgiving. The 
more man Abraham Lincoln found in the 
war the more thanksgiving did he offer to 
God. In all this he betrays no sense of con- 
tradiction. There is no reason why we may 
not carry this union of gratitude back to the 
beginnings of our career as a nation. We 
thank God truly that in all our crises He has 
raised up strong men; and we thank men 
that they gave faithful heed to the divine 
call in behalf of the people. How often have 
we thanked God for Abraham Lincoln him- 
self? Territory is God's gift; and men are 
God's gifts! God gave the Israelites a 



THE LAW GIVER 37 

Moses; He gave the Americans a Washing- 
ton and a Lincoln. Therefore, from what- 
ever direction we approach the land, we meet 
God. Each man may say to his own heart, 
**It is the land which the Lord thy God giveth 
thee." 

Patriotism needs just such a message as 
this to save it from degeneracy. No man 
can fail to be genuinely patriotic who feels 
that his country has in a deep sense been 
given to him by God Himself. Then the na- 
tion seems to partaJie of the greatness and 
glory of the Giver. It may sound somewhat 
superficial for a man to say that he is an 
American because he was bom one; but the 
word is deeper than first appears. One feels 
the tie and obligation of a certain home be- 
cause he was born into it; so one feels the 
tie of a certain nation because God chose it 
for him. If a man, bom elsewhere, feels 
that he was led to these shores by the hand 
of God, and that he has staid here so long 
that, according to the divine law as written 



38 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

in his own nature, Ms interests have been 
largely transferred to the land of his adop- 
tion, he also can repeat to himself the words, 
^^The land which the Lord thy God giveth 
thee." Whatever is ours by divine gift or 
divine appointment has for us a new sacred- 
ness. This reference of the feeling of pa- 
triotism back to God gives room for breadth. 
If patriotism is a mere prejudice, it tends to 
narrowness. If patriotism is a true instinct 
it tends to liberality* If God gives to other 
men their country, as He gives ours to us, 
we must honor their love even as we honor 
our own. Under this view we can feel 
naught but gladness when we see people 
from many nations coming to this word and 
taking it as their own, each citizen repeating 
the great phrase for his own instruction and 
inspiration, ^^The land which the Lord thy 
God giveth thee.'' 

This divine theory of the land has a bear- 
ing on the future. All faith points to duty. 
The gift of territory, Constitution, and spir- 



THE LAW GIVER 39 

itual impulse is not to be abused. Good men 
feel outraged when their gifts to others are 
made subject to waste and dissipation, and 
they feel the more outraged when their gifts 
to others are turned against themselves. 
This land is to be used for the Giver. This 
means that in reality it is to be used for 
the deepest good of men. Our outward 
service to God always reaches His children. 
If our people could live under this text's 
dominion, if they could all really feel that 
this land was the gift of God, the evils that 
infest our national life would vanish as dark- 
ness goes when morning comes. This is the 
land which God gives us. We are to hand 
it back to Him with its acres growing with 
His harvests, and its mountains tower- 
ing to His glory. This is the constitution 
which God sent us by His messengers. We 
are to hand it back to Him— our laws filled 
with His Spirit, our courts dominated by His 
justice, our political principles governed by 
His righteousness. The spiritual grace 



40 THANKSGIYING SEEMONS 

which dwelt in the hearts of our forefathers, 
and which dwells in the hearts of good men 
to-day, is the gift of God. Leonard Bacon 
long ago expressed the faith of onr history 
and the faith of onr prophecy: 

' O God, beneath Thy guiding hand 

Our exiled fathers crossed the sea ; 
And when they trod the wintry strand. 

With prayer and psalm they worshiped Thee. / 

Thou heard' st, well pleased, the song, the 
prayer ; 

Thy blessing came and still its power 
Shall onward, through all ages, bear 

The memory of that holy hour. 

Laws, freedom, truth, and faith in God 
Came with those exiles o' er the waves ; 

And where their pilgrim feet have trod. 
The God they trusted guards their graves. 

''And here Thy name, O God of love. 
Their children's children shall adore. 
Till these eternal hills remove. 

And spring adorns the earth no more.** 



II 

THE THANKFULNESS OF A SEER 



i\ 



■i 



THANKSGIVING FOR LIFE'S 
VARIETY 

Text: '^TKey are new every morning.^' 
—Lamentations iii, 23. 

In his drama, *'The House of Eimmon/' 
Henry Van Dyke brings the Hebrew maid to 
the door of the grievously afflicted Naaman 
to sing a song of cheer. The sun is rising in 
splendor. The author makes the maid true 
to the doctrine of her people who saw God's 
work in field and flower and did not falter 
in saying that His hand weaved the grace 
and beauty of the sunbeams. She beheld the 
opening day as a symbol of the divine love 
and sang it thus : 

Above the edge of dark appear the lances of the sun; 

Along the mountain ridges clear his rosy heralds run; 
The vapors down the valley go 
Like broken armies, dark and low. 
43 



I 



44 THANKSGIVINa SERMONS 

Look up, my heart, from every hill 
In folds of rose and daffodil 
The sunrise banners flow. 

O fly away on silent wing, ye boding owls of night ! 

O welcome little birds that sing the coming in of light! 
For new, and new, and ever new. 
The golden bud within the blue : 
And every morning seems to say : 

There *s something happy on the way. 
And God sends love to you ! ' " * 

This sentiment is taught only in that 
school of faith which declares that God is 
so good and so great that He starts every 
day along its own new path, bringing to ns 
new material blessings, letting us look into 
new faces, revealing to ns new phases of 
truth, opening up to us new regions of char- 
acter, and putting before us new opportuni- 
ties for work. Under this view of the divine 
care even the Book of Lamentations ceases 
its wailing and says of the Lord's mercies, 
*'They are new every morning." Instead of 
monotony we see variety; instead of occa- 

* Page 78. 



THE SEER 45 

sional benefit the constancy of mercy; in- 
stead of heartless machinery, the hand of 
the loving God. 

We will do well to tarry with this word 
for a time. It is peculiarly appropriate for 
the Thanksgiving season. If we can get it 
into our thought that the divine mercies are 
'*new every morning," the quality of this 
holiday will flow forward over all the days 
of the year. Let us, then, fasten the text 
into our thought by noting the freshness 
which at every point God gives to relieve the 
lives of men. It is often said that '* variety 
is the spice of life." If the divine mercies 
are new every morning we will find our time 
provided with a gracious variety. If we 
have not eyes to see the variety, we shall 
certainly not have palates to taste the spice. 
The call bids us open our eyes to the new- 
ness of the mercies which God invests in each 
new day. 

We observe, first, that the divine mercies 
are ever new and varied at the point of ma- 



46 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

terial blessings. Thousands of years ago, 
ere men had come to any accuracy of astro- 
nomical knowledge, they believed that a new 
sun arose every morning. It was the opinion 
that when the setting sun sank behind the 
hills it went down to death and never rose 
again. The next morning a new sun came 
from the cloudy depths and took its one day's 
journey over the face of the sky. They 
thought also that a new moon was really a 
new moon, not the old moon reappearing, but 
a '^new moon" started afresh from the hand 
of the great Maker.* Though wrong from 
the scientific point of view, the ancients had 
a great truth hidden in their error. Chang- 
ing their astronomy into something of cor- 
rectness, it may be said that a new world 
turns daily toward the sun. The divine hand 
has moved over the surface, and though the 
general outlines may remain the same, God 
has imparted the touches of a new variety. 
New colors gleam from the fields; new ^g- 

* Watkinson, " The Program of Life," p. 25. 



THE SEER 47 

ures move across the clouds; new shades 
shine on leaves and flowers. The accurate 
eye will see that within the darkness of the 
night all things have been changed and that 
there is a new heaven and a new earth. 

'^ We never look twice on the same river," 
is an old proverb. The stretch of water at 
which we gazed has passed ere we look again. 
So is it with the stream of the world life; 
it is never the same ; new floods pour through 
the channels. Though the current may ap- 
pear very much the same, it has received its 
newness and a strange stream goes by with 
a perpetual mingling of the water behind and 
before that prevents any definite identifica- 
tion of its own self. There is a story told 
of a man who tried to fiLnd two apples that 
were precisely alike. He carefully examined 
great quantities of fruit, only to find that 
every apple had its own peculiarity, and at 
last he gave up his futile task in despair. A. 
superficial glance over barrels of apples 
would lead us to say that all were very much 



48 THANKSGRrCXa SEKMOXS 

the same ; we would be impressed by the law 
of similarity. But a more careful view 
would lead us to see that each separate apple 
has its own special color and shape; we 
would be impressed by the law of variety. 
There are no two trees that are just alike; 
closer than that, there are no two leaves on 
all the trees of the world that are just alike. 
Grod has so much respect for individuality 
that He does not violate the law of freshness 
even in the tissue of the small leaves. If we 
would leam to take God's material mercies 
more carefully and seriously, we would soon 
see that they were new every morning and 
fresh every evening. When our eyes become 
keen and we train our minds to see the 
sharper distinctions, we shall find that the 
world will not tire us by its seeming monoto- 
nies. It is a new world on which we look 
to-day. We never saw the world as it is now ; 
we never shall see just such a world again. 
The gifts of God's hand are new each morn- 
ing. The fresh touches of the divine handi- 



* 



THE SEER 49 

work are in all the fields and on all the trees 
and over all the dome of the sky. 

If a man counts that companionship is a 
mercy, he will find that here, too, God has 
made provision for endless variety. We may 
return here to the figure of the stream, this 
time placing a human life upon its banks. 
William Canton gives this ^^Brookside 
Logic'' from his child's lips: 

**As the brook caught the blossoms she cast, 
Such a wonder gazed out from her face. 
My, the water was all running past. 

Yet the brook never budged from its place ! 

O, the magic of what was so clear ! 

I explained. And enlightened her? Nay — 
Why, but, father, I could n*t stay here 

If I always was running away ! * " * 

Yet in truth that was what the child was 
ever doing— staying, and yet running away. 
A new child had come forward with this 
weird remark. This is what makes the child 
so interesting. How entrancing it is to see 
the newness that keeps moving in upon the 

* W. v., " Her Book," p. 88. 
4 



50 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

developing life ! How each new way or word 
fixes our attention! 

The world of humanity offers us the 
study of many types. It is a suggestion 
often made that there are no two faces in 
the world that are precisely alike. All men 
may have eyes and noses and mouths and 
ears, and may possess in common certain 
general features; yet it requires but little 
care to discover to the observer that every 
man has his own physical individuality. To 
the superficial observer men become monoto- 
nous; to the close looker they offer such an 
interesting variety that companionship with 
them never grows wearisome. The so-called 
peculiar man is always an object of atten- 
tion. When we learn that in the good sense 
every man has his own peculiarities, then 
every man seems a fresh social mercy sent 
to elicit our interest. Men and women never 
cease to grow ; each year they take on change 
in one direction or another. It may be up- 
ward until we see the light of the heights 



THE SEER 51 

shining on their faces; it may be downward 
until we see the shadow of the depths creep- 
ing over their brows. The change is ever a 
matter of interest, though one may thrill and 
the other appall ns. And there are no two 
minds that are alike. Given two men and 
the same subject upon which they are to 
speak, and you will always get a different 
form of language and a different line of par- 
ticular thought. No two persons think just 
alike. There may be decided agreements; 
but differences of sentiment will surely ap- 
pear even in the most congenial lives. There 
is no picture gallery in the world as interest- 
ing as the mass of human faces seen in real 
life; there is no library in the world that 
offers such possibilities of wisdom as the 
study of the minds of men. To one who has 
a social heart man presents a limitless field 
of research, a field with wide stretches un- 
explored and calling the kindly investigator 
to the reception of mercies which are new 
every morning. 



52 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

As it is with individual men, so is it with 
the larger human movements. There is a 
familiar quotation to the effect that ** history 
repeats itself." The phrase has its mean- 
ing; yet if one is to hold language to any 
accuracy, it is more nearly correct to say 
that history never repeats itself. We make 
our study and we may find some resem- 
blances; but along with these is the special 
peculiarity that we find in every time and 
in every movement.* "We wake up every 
morning to a new day in the world's history. 
The world has had but one Protestant Ref- 
ormation, but one American Revolution, but 
one Spanish- American War. We are ever 
learning the lesson that God thrusts upon 
nations even as upon men new problems and 
new responsibilities, so unlike any that our 
country has known before that it is small 
wonder that we tremble and are sobered in 
their presence. If a man wants variety, let 
him note the new issues of these decades. 

* Watkinson, " The Program of Life," p. 27. 



THE SEEE 53 

If we liave felt that we were suffering from 
historical monotony, where is the man who 
does not see enough variety in the present 
situation to make him keep his eyes wide 
open? One morning we are saying to our- 
selves confidently that two great nations will 
not go to war at this stage of civilization; 
the next morning one-half of the Spanish 
fleet is lying at the bottom of the sea. One 
month the Filipinos are our allies; the next 
day they are our enemies. One year we are 
in our battles and our papers are giving 
large space to the proceedings of war; the 
next we are watching the proceedings of the 
Conference of Peace and our papers are giv- 
ing space to the deliberations of the pacific 
Eound Table at The Hague. One day we 
hear the guns of Eussia and Japan sounding 
about Port Arthur; the next the whisper of 
peace comes from the council on the New 
England Coast. One day the Sultan sits 
serene in his authority; the next the Young 
Turks are knocking violently at his door and 



54 THANKSGIVING SEBMONS 

demanding more than a fictitious constitu- 
tion. If a man be interested in human move- 
ments, he will not complain now because 
'Hhat which hath been is and that which is 
to be hath already been, and there is nothing 
new under the sun." If events are the mes- 
sengers of the divine mercy, surely then the 
divine mercies are new every morning. To 
the man who believes in God and believes 
that amid all the jar of human opinions He 
is working out His wise designs, there is 
nothing tiresome in the contemplation of the 
present time. The King of heaven and earth 
moves on to His infinite victory; the camp- 
fires shine daily from different heights; the 
tramp of the army is heard on different con- 
tinents. But if the God of battles moves for- 
ward to the performance of His mysterious 
wonders, then surely it may be said of the 
divine mercies, **They are new every morn- 
ing." 

It is even so with the mercies of truth 
which God is always revealing. One of the 



THE SEER 55 

greatest thinkers of all time, whose mind had 
explored for many effective years the re- 
gions of knowledge, said in the midst of his 
intellectual conquests that he felt as if he 
were a little child picking np pebbles on the 
shore while the great ocean of truth lay out 
before him still. It is a suggestive figure, 
and it is small wonder that it has won for 
itself frequent quotation. If we do not know 
that God has new mercies of truth to make 
known to us each day, it is because our souls 
have been blind to a thousand sights and 
deaf to a thousand voices. As the man who 
is in love with the material world finds that 
a new glory covers the fields each day, a new 
brightness shimmers each night in the stars, 
new viands wait to satisfy his appetite, and 
new blood throbs through his veins— so the 
man who is in love with higher revelations 
will find that every morning there is a new 
foot on the floor and a new face at the door. 
But the mind must bow its welcome and seek 
acquaintance. In any normal morning men 



56 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

will find tliat the mercies of truth are new. 
Nor does it seem as if we would soon exhaust 
the resources of knowledge and all our lives 
come down to the monotony from which 
naught can be taken and to which naught can 
be added. Every morning God gives us a 
chance to know more. If we do not know 
more to-morrow morning than we know to- 
day, it will surely be our fault or our misfor- 
tune. When we have come to the place where 
the mind seems as important as the body, 
where we put as much emphasis upon knowl- 
edge as we do upon food, where ignorance 
seems as dreadful to us as hunger— we shall 
find that in the higher realm God's mercies 
are never stale. His truth breaks fresh upon 
the mind with each new day; the book of 
life opens to another page, and it is our priv- 
ilege to spell out some new lesson. 

Thus is it too with character. If mercies 
consist of the things which are good and 
which may be appropriated after due effort, 
then the possibilities of character are new 



THE SEER 57 

every morning. To-day we have all faced 
new opportunities for growth in grace and 
in the knowledge of Christ. It is only- the 
man of spiritual pride that will not feel that 
the hours offer to him a new spiritual chance 
—a chance to be more like Christ when the 
sun goes down to-night. It must be that we 
fail to see the significance of this line of 
mercies so freely offered to all men. Each 
morning comes with this invitation: '^Ho, 
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the 
waters, and he that hath no money; yea, 
come, buy wine and milk without money and 
without price. Wherefore do ye spend money 
for that which is not bread, and your labor 
for that which satisfieth not? Hearken dili- 
gently unto Me, and eat ye that which is 
good, and let your soul delight itself in fat- 
ness." This is simply the call to accept the 
divine mercies of character. Every morning 
is alive with that opportunity. If we do not 
see these mercies it is because we are blind. 
Ah! What unconquered regions of kindness 



58 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

lie before our souls ! Wliat unexplored fields 
of benevolence ! What untried paths of con- 
secration! These are the possibilities that 
God sets before us now. To-morrow morn- 
ing should see us nearer to our ideal, and to- 
morrow morning should see us setting out 
on the stubborn and courageous march to- 
ward our ideal. The height and breadth 
and depth of the love of Christ give us an 
ambition equal to the efforts of an eternity. 
At this point '^eye hath not seen, nor ear 
heard, neither have entered into the heart of 
man the things which God hath prepared for 
them that love Him. ' ' * * The measure of the 
fullness of the stature of Jesus Christ' '— 
what growth to the spirit does that offer sug- 
gest? If a man will open the eyes of his soul 
and behold the wondrous things that God 
presents to him each day, he will utter these 
words in their highest spiritual meaning, 
**Thy mercies are new every morning.'' 

Finally, God's mercies of work are new 
every morning. However monotonous our 



THE SEEE 59 

round of toil may be, God varies it constantly 
with new opportunities. Each day is a fresh 
chance to do something for Him and for His. 
If we look into the same faces that we saw 
last week, they have yet been changed by a 
week of growth. We shall be called upon to 
give them a new lesson from God's book, and 
that lesson will make its new appeal to their 
hearts. In reference to the things that we 
may accomplish, God's mercies are new 
every morning. 

His mercies are new every morning! 
How thankless we have been through the 
months! His mercies are new every morn- 
ing ! How blind we have been ! His mercies 
are new every morning! How monotonous 
we have made our lives when God has in- 
tended that each day should come as a fresh 
gift from His own hand! Every morning! 
Every morning ! The mom which awakes us 
to gladness and cheer and keeps surprising 
us with messages of success! The morning 
that awakes us to sorrow and gloom and 



60 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

keeps pursuing us with words of defeat! 
Thy mercies are new every morning! At 
the end of every day we may repeat verses 
from that old hynm: 

This day God was our Sun and Shield, 

Our Keeper and our Guide ; 
His care was on our weakness shown. 

His mercies multiplied. 

Minutes and mercies multiplied. 

Have made up all this day ; 
Minutes came quick, but mercies were 

More swift and free than they. 

New time, new favors, and new joys. 

Do a new song require : 
Till we shall praise Thee as we would. 

Accept our heart's desire.** 

When each dawning day in our lives 
sends the greeting up to God, ^ ^ They are new 
every morning/' life will cast off all its 
monotony, our hearts will banish their in- 
gratitude, and Christ will rule in love! 



V 



Ill 

THE THANKFULNESS OF A 
PSALMIST 



THOUGHFULNESS AND THANK- 
FULNESS 

Text: ''Bless the Lord, my soul, and for- 
get not all His benefits/'— 'Psalm ciii, 2. 

XhEEE is an old poem which represents 
two angels as being sent forth from heaven 
to earth. The duty of one was to collect pe- 
titions; the duty of the other was to collect 
thanksgivings. When they returned from 
their mission each seemed to be embarrassed : 

"The Angel of Petitions bore a sack 
Cram full, and tied uncouthly on his back ; 
Yet even then it seemed that he had lack 
Of bag or basket. 

"The Angel of Thanksgivings blushed to feel 
The empty lightness of his mighty creel ; 
* But three ! ' he muttered, turning on his heel 
To hide his basket. 
63 



64 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

**Then spoke St. Peter : 'When again you go 
On prayer-gathering, you will better know 
That men's petitions in the world below 
Fill a big basket. 

** But when you go to gather up their thanks 
For prayers well-answered and forgiven pranks. 
For health restored and disentangled hanks, — 
Your smallest basket.* '* 

Now, the poetry is not great, and the charge 
against humanity is exaggerated. None the 
less the New Testament records that ten 
lepers were cleansed, while only one returned 
to give thanks. The definition which says 
that ^^ gratitude is a lively sense of favors 
yet to come'' may be offered as humor; but 
it has its serious side. It has been said by 
some one that our custom of offering thanks 
before the meal rather than afterward rep- 
resents a wider attitude, and that we are all 
prone to receive the gifts and to forget the 
Giver. 

And there is enough truth in the charge 
to make us thoughtful and careful. We must 
confess the necessity of frequently exhorting 



?^- 



THE PSALMIST 65 

our minds to remembrance. The psalmist's 
proclamation to Ms own soul is not out of 
date. It is the meaning of our President's 
proclamation, and of our governor's. The 
whole call may be focused into these words, 
<< Forget not all His benefits." Indeed, the | 
appointment of an annual Thanksgiving Day 
is itself an admission of our tendency to for- 
getfulness. The ideal thing would be to have 
every day filled with gratitude. The special 
day is intended as a spur to thought and as 
a reminder of our much-neglected duty. Per- 
haps, then, we can not better use the hour 
of the message than by putting the question, 
What obscures gratitude and why are we so — 
apt to forget the divine benefits? 

The general answer is: Simply because 
we are not thoughtful in regard to the source 
of benefits. It is an interesting fact that the 
word ^Hhink" and the word ^Hhank" were 
in the Old Anglo-Saxon language substan- 
tially the same. It may even be that the 
word *Hhank" is the past tense of the word 
5 



66 THANKSGIVINa SEEMONS 

^^tliiiik,'' just as '^shrank'' is the past tense 
of '^shrink." The connection of the two 
words is, at least, intimate, and the relation 
of the mental and moral states which they 
signify is as close as the etymology of the 
words wonld indicate. Thinking must al- 
ways precede thanking. F or getf nines s and 
1: gratitude can not live together. Thanksgiv- 
' ing, like other forms of life, dies in a vacuum. 
Yet it must be recognized that the text is not 
a call to the impossible. Its statement is 
happily negative— even though in another 
sense it is decidedly positive. We are not 
told to ^'remember all His benefits." Who 
would be equal to that task? Eather are we 
told, '* Forget not all His benefits/' There 
is something modest and reasonable in the 
demand thus made upon the soul. We shall 
consider some of the particular phases of 
duty of thankfulness. 

There is, first of all, the thoughtless spirit 

which regards benefits merely as matters of 

\ course, KJod's mercies are new every morn- 



THE PSALMIST 67 

ing and fresh every evening, and their very 
regularity may seem to render gratitude 
monotonous. An American clergyman gives 
a unique interpretation to the statement that 
'*Adam and his wife hid themselves from 
the presence of the Lord God amongst the 
trees of the garden." His suggestion is that 
the garden of the Lord concealed the Lord 
of the garden. ^'God and Adam were on 
opposite sides of the trees. The creature 
swallowed the Creator. The gift rubbed out 
the Giver. ' '* However true this version may 
be to the account in that early chapter in 
Genesis, it certainly has a just correction for 
modern life. Men who recall the scanty 
Christmas tokens of their own boyhood, and 
then behold their children playing carelessly 
amid the plethora of gifts, must often won- 
der whether the children appreciate the much 
as they themselves appreciated the little. 
As life grows richer we may become more 
dependent upon its gifts, and yet less appre- 

*" Three Gates on a Side," Parkhurst, p. 70. 



68 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

ciative of its gifts. Unless we are heedful, 
the more the garden blooms the less will we 
think of HinL who makes it bloom. The 
leaves and flowers come between us and the 
Maker. The constancy of God's gifts con- 
ceals God. 

Our ordinary blessings are, after all, the 
very richest that God gives. Yet they are 
likely to be least appreciated. A Christian 
man has a habit of saying to his friends who 
greet him with the words, *^Fine morning, 
isn't it?" *'Yes! You and I could not im- 
prove upon it if we were making it, could 
we?" It is a proper lesson in natural the- 
ology. It is an every-day way of glorifying 
God. Say what the philosophers will, the ar- 
gument from design will not die. The world 
is fitted to our needs ; and there is a message 
in that fact. That total fitness is a gift. We 
breathe the air; but we may forget that the 
air is a gift because the air is so faithful. 
We open the window, and the life-sustaining 
current rushes into the room. It presses 



THE PSALMIST 69 

upon us with eagerness and seems to crave 
the opportunity of meeting our needs. Yet it 
is so easy to take it as a natural part of our 
physical heritage for which no gratitude 
need be given. 

It is even so with sunshine. We step 
from our homes in the morning and see the 
sun touching the earth and sky into radiance. 
For ages that same sun has been shining, 
calling forth the grasses of every spring, 
painting the flowers of every summer, and 
ripening the fruits of every autumn ; and still 
it shines upon the world with undiminished 
bounty. But the sun is ever in the service 
of man, and we have become so accustomed 
to that service that our appreciation is tame. 
Emerson said that if the stars came out only 
once in a century men would rush from their I 
houses, look up into the skies, and adore. 
We allow the constancy of the stars to blind 
us to their beauty. Herein is a parable. 
We need not marvel that the Bible makes 
both sun and star symbols of the good God. 



70 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

All this will disclose to us that form of 
forgetfulness which receives many gifts as 
matters of course. A ritual that has grown 
up through centuries of custom prescribes 
a form of thanksgiving before partaking of 
food. But Charles Lamb is quite serious 
when in one of his ^^ Essays of Elia'' he 
suggests that we should say grace upon other 
occasions as well. He says: **I want a form 
for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a 
moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, 
for a solved problem.''* Why not! Riley 
writes : 

For the world is filled with roses. 

And the roses filled with dew. 
And the dew is filled with heavenly love 

That drips for me and you." 

Theology can not stop short of that cheer- 
ful and thankful faith. If God is real, He 
means all this, and more. Therefore, we 
must cultivate thoughtfulness. Science has 
been telling us about the immanence of God. 
We may well carry that doctrine to its splen- 

* " Essays of Elia," Lamb, p. 157. 



THE PSALMIST 71 

did conclusion. When we liave done so we 
shall cease to forget *^all His benefits," and 
we shall not allow the constancy of God in 
giving to account for our lack of constancy 
in thanking. 

There is a second type of thoughtlessness 
which regards God's gifts as matters of de- 
sert. He has made us co-workers with Him- 
self even in the lower responsibilities. Just 
as the little child in aiding its parent often 
thinks that its tiny hands are carrying all 
the load, so do older children sometimes de- 
ceive themselves. We construe our partner- 
ship into a loneliness of responsibility and 
so into a loneliness of credit. We feel that 
we must look out for our own interests, and 
sometimes we congratulate ourselves that we 
do this quite successfully. We look at the 
home and say : ' ^ That house represents years 
of my labor. It is the result of my industry 
and economy." We look over a well-sup- 
plied table and say: *'I worked for this food. 
It is spread in answer to my honest toil." 



^2 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS j 

"We look at our stocks and bonds and say: 
'*This wealth was gained by years of earnest 
effort. I deserve credit for my success and 
fidelity in business life.'' So runs our story 
of self-satisfaction. If we dwelt upon the 
human side in fixing our responsibility as 
much as we dwell upon it in determining our 
credit, what mighty workers would we be- 
come! 

Let it be conceded that there is something 
of justice in these self-congratulations. But 
the view is one-sided. Under any religious 
theory of the world man is helpless without 
God. When Jesus said, *^ Apart from Me 
ye can do nothing," His word went further 
than the first thought indicates. God is ever- 
more speaking this truth to men. We need 
not hesitate in bringing the word down to 
the details of life. There is an old theory, 
called the theory of '* continuous creation." 
The idea is that God is always creating the 
world. His fiat goes forth every moment. 
The light shines now because He says, as in 



THE PSALMIST 73 

the sublime poem of creation, *' Light be!" 
Yonder tree stands in strength because God 
creates it in each infinitesimal point of time. 
There must be a certain truth in this old the- 
ory. At any rate, it draws near to this faith 
—that men and things depend upon God for 
their being and for their continuance. 

When we get this conception our praise 
of self suffers a large discount. Then man 
looks again at his house and finds that all 
the materials of wood, stone, and iron came 
from the hand of God. He looks again at his 
table and finds that the attractive coloring 
of the fruit and the appetizing flavor of the 
viands represent a gracious plan for exciting 
and satisfying man's pleasure. '^God giveth 
us richly all things to enjoy''— this language 
states a fact about God's work and a fact 
about God's motive. The truth may apply 
to inner faculties as well as to outer benefits. 
The successful financier is perhaps most 
prone to felicitate himself. Still there is 
quite as much ground for supposing that the 



74 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

faculty of making money is an endowment 
as there is for supposing tliat the faculty of 
making poetry is an endowment. We say 
that the poet is bom, and not made. It may 
be even so with the maker of money. The 
word to the Israelites in Deuteronomy viii, 
18, may have meaning for an individual as 
well as for a nation, ^^Thou shalt remember 
the Lord God; for it is He that giveth thee 
power to get wealth." We have no warrant 
for assuming that one kind of faculty is God- 
given and that another kind is self-acquired. 
All faculties alike reach back to God, and 
all alike depend upon man's faithful develop- 
ment and use of native powers. Whichever 
way we turn we must confess our partner- 
ship with God. Our largest desert grows out 
of a diligent and reverent use of His help. 
When a man measures the reach of his own 
powers, and then notes how many things 
come to him from realms utterly beyond that 
reach, his view of life is affected with hu- 
mility. At Thanksgiving he comes 



THE PSALMIST 75 

To see our Father's hand once more 
Reverse for us the plenteous horn 

Of autumn, filled and running o*er 

With fruit, and flower, and golden corn ! * ' 

Over against the gifts of God in the world 
he finds the gifts of God in himself. The in- 
ner strength meets the outer opportunity, 
and they match each other. Thus does the 
sense of dependence join the sense of desert; 
man ceases to thank himself alone and goes 
forward to thank God. 

The sense of gratitude is frequently ob- 
scured by our tendency to make the divine 
benefi:ts matters of comparison. It is easy 
for us to find persons who seem to be more 
favored than are we. Even if, in a general 
way, we may be in better conditions, we may 
observe some single regard in which they 
surpass. That one item of superiority may 
crush out of our hearts the spirit of grati- 
tude. The cure here is not to compare our- 
selves with our supposed inferiors in fortune 
or character. That method may develop an 



Y6 THANKSaiVINa SERMONS 

iinwortliy pride. Perhaps it is possible for 
us to see the misfortunes of others and to 
thank God more for our own fortunes. But 
danger lies here; the process does not seem 
quite generous. Besides we may wrongly 
imply that the other men are not equally in 
the care of God. 

That loss is common would not make 
My own less bitter, rather more : 
I Too common ! Never morning wore ' 
I To evening, but some heart did break.'* 

Even as the sorrows of others offer a poor 
solace for our lesser sorrows, so do the sor- 
rows of others offer a doubtful inspiration 
for our own thanksgiving. 

But it must always be legitimate to con- 
trast ourselves as we are with ourselves as 
we might be. A boy once went with his fa- 
ther to visit a great-uncle. This uncle was 
an old man and had for many months lain 
upon his bed enduring nameless pain. Be- 
neath each of his eyes was a cancer; he was 



THE PSALMIST 77 

totally blind. The boy was not used to sights 
of suffering. His memory still holds a vivid 
picture of the invalid's pinched and de- 
formed face. But more vivid than the mem- 
ory of his face is the memory of his words. 
Tremblingly the old man said, **I can not 
see you; but, thank God! I can hear you." 
He was grateful for the social avenue that 
still lay open between himself and his be- 
loved. He was a genuinely devout man. In 
the room of pain and darkness he found 
cause for thankfulness— a cause that grew 
more emphatic in view of the Scriptural as- 
surance that God sets affliction to work for 
man until it brings glory of an exceeding 
and eternal kind. 

The like thought applies to our station 
and work. As long as a man feels that his 
life of toil is good enough to keep he must 
have reason for gratitude. If he comes to 
the divine and human view that the lowliest 
occupation gives full opportunity for the de- 



rs THANKSGIVINa SEEMONS 

velopment of the highest thing, he will grow 
toward the feeling that 

The narrow hall expands and spreads 

away into a kingly palace ; 
The roof lifts to the sky and unseen 

fingers work 
The ceiling with rich blazonry.** 

It ought not to be considered a piece of 
foolish ideality that led some one to put these 
words upon the lips of a *^ lobster man;" 

*'Aye ! it *s lobsters here, an' it 's lobsters there ; 
An* it 's cryin* lobsters everywhere. 
But I *m never worryin' whatever I do. 
For I know the Lord is helpin' us through. 
An' one should n' t complain when one knows 

he *s a share 
In the Lord's good love an' the Lord's kind 

care. 
So I cry my lobsters an' earn my bread. 
An' I count my blessin's each step I tread. 
For there 's alius this thought wherever I go — 
The Lord is leadin', keep follerin', Joe." 

We may not all have a faith like this; but 
we will all quickly confess its blessing and 
peace. The humblest man with that view- 



THE PSALMIST 79 

point can find positive benefits in his station 
and work. The gifts of God always lie in 
the place of duty. 

Closely allied to this is the forgetfulness 
which considers benefits as matters of ex- 
ception. By this is meant that we often fail 
to regard disaster as exceptional as it really 
is. Joseph in his duty as interpreter said to 
Pharaoh, ^'And there shall arise after the 
seven years of plenty seven years of famine, 
and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the 
land of Egypt." There is a revelation of 
human nature here. One year of famine 
doubtless attracted more attention than had 
the seven years of abundance. Ere twelve 
months of drought and disaster had passed, 
Egypt was full of murmurings. In that re- 
spect the land of the Mississippi is like the 
land of the Nile, the man of the modern time 
like the man of the ancient. You may enjoy 
good health for ten, twenty, or thirty years, 
and then be compelled to endure an illness 
of ten, twenty, or thirty days. The years of 



80 THANKSaiVING SEEMONS 

health may leave your memory, or, if they 
remain, they may suggest only a disquieting 
contrast for your present condition. 

There is something unfair here. Health 
has been the rule, sickness the exception. 
Why should we feel and act as if all this 
were reversed? Should the exception so fill 
our hearts with complaint as to crowd out 
praise for the rule? Years ago there was 
published the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, 
a young Eussian artist. The book was most 
interesting as showing in a frank way the 
spirit of an ambitious and vain girl. In this 
Journal she states that for one month she 
had heard nothing but compliments. Hun- 
dreds had praised her paintings ; but one day 
a critic appeared. The one voice of fault 
sounded louder than the thousand voices of 
praise. The exception led her to forget the 
rule, as she herself confesses.* We all know 
this mood in our relations with men; and 
we all know, too, that it works into our re- 

*"TIie Journal of Marie Bashklrtseff," p. 149, 



THE PSALMIST 81 

lations witli God. Even where our misfor- 
tunes and our sicknesses may be traced di- 
rectly to our violations of God's law we un- 
consciously ask that miracles may be done 
for us. Where troubles come upon us from 
points beyond our fault or control we may 
allow them to hide the benefits that come to 
us from points beyond our worth or control. 
Will a man rob God? Aye! Often the rob- 
bery consists in withholding justice rather 
than tithes ! 

This leads to the observation that we do 
not discern God with sufficient clearness in 
the ordinary events of life. It is natural that 
rare and startling occurrences should seize 
our thought and insist on special recogni- 
tion. When danger advances within an inch 
of our lives and then recedes, we are driven 
by fright into gratitude. We feel the awful 
tremor of the earthquake, and we see the 
black devastation in the wake of the fire. 
Beyond those acres of havoc we ourselves 
have rushed to safety. We may not be dog- 
6 



82 THANKSGIVINa SERMONS 

matic. But we can surely go so far as to 
say that, while tiie so-called special provi- 
dences should not call for less gratitude, the 
every-day providences should call for more. 
All this is well illustrated by an incident re- 
lated by Gail Hamilton in her book entitled 
'^Stumbling Blocks." Two men were riding 
together along a road. The horse of one 
stumbled and fell. The rider was cast vio- 
lently to the earth, but was not injured. At 
once he turned to his companion and said 
with warmth that it was a great mercy on 
God's part that he had escaped harm. 
*^But," his friend replied, *'I have greater 
reason to be thankful ; for my horse did not 
stumble at all."* This homely incident 

^ , finely illustrates the greatest secret of grati- 
tude. If we are saved from swift and awful 
danger we are ready to give earnest thanks ; 
if we are not exposed to danger at all, the 

^1 duty of gratitude may not occur to us. After 
earthquake, fire, pestilence, and panic we de- 

* " stumbling Blocks," Gail HamiltX)n, p. 164. 



THE PSALMIST 83 

voutly praise God that we have escaped dis- « 
aster. Would it not be just when earthquake, 
fire, pestilence, and panic have not come at 
all, to give God our heartiest thanksgiving? , 
This year the earthquake has not come to 
the city.* Let us thank God! This year 
your horse has not stumbled in the journey. 
You should thank God! The steadiest wit- 
ness of God's loving care is not our occa- 
sional rescue from peril, but rather our nor- 
mal joy and safety. The divine goodness is ' 
the atmosphere in which we dwell. When i 
our eyes are fully opened we shall *'see His 
loving kindness in the daytime, and in the 
night His song shall be with us!" 

The conclusion is that gratitude is the 
natural path to God. The Scriptures often * 
present this thought. The divine '^ goodness 
and mercy" led to the psalmist's resolve 
that he would '* abide in the house of the 
Lord forever." We are told that the ''good- 
ness of God should lead us to repentance." 

* Preached in San Francisco, Tlianksgiving, 1908. 



84: THANKSaiYING SEEMONS 

It is '^hj the mercies of G-od" that we are 
besought to present ourselves unto Him. 
No joy of life is complete without a note of 
thanksgiving. To whom shall we render our 
gratitude! We can not thank men simply; 
for so many of our benefits flow from a 
source higher than men. "We can not thank 
a dead order of nature; for gratitude ad- 
dressed to laws and principles is meaning- 
less. But we must thank; and our thanking 
must reach an object. When the spring 
comes and invites us to a concert of praise, 
and mother Earth seems to awake her chil- 
dren from their long sleep, that they may 
go forth to laugh and romp all the long day 
of summer, the believing heart must find 
God. When the fall comes with the sober 
glory of foliage, and when mother Earth, 
knowing that it is evening, calls her weary 
children back to her bosom and puts them 
to sleep for the winter night, we must go to 
Him who promises that seed-time and har- 
vest, and cold and heat, and summer and 



THE PSALMIST 85 

winter shall not cease. Gratitude is the nat- 
ural and sure path into the presence of God. 
Life is a gift. The earth is a gift. The 
capacity for enjoyment is a gift. Free grace 
is of many kinds. Every good and perfect 
gift Cometh down from above— even from 
the Father. Therefore, when a man looks 
along the path of a gift he always looks up- 
ward. The gifts are so many that the ascend- 
ing paths become like bewildering, and yet 
gracious, mazes. But each path ends with 
God; and the man who sees commands him- 
self to gratitude by this old imperative, 
** Bless the Lord, my soul, and forget not 
all His benefits." 



IV 

THE THANKFULNESS OF A 
PROPHET 



THANKSGIVING FOR THE COMING 
ORDER 

Texts: ''In that day this song shall he sung 
in the land of Judah; We have a strong 
city; salvation will God appoint for walls 
and bulwarks/'— IsA. xxvi, 1. 

''And in that day thou shalt say, 
Lord, I will praise thee/'— Isa. xii, 1. 

These are the songs of the man who 
thanked God for the coming order. Thanks- 
giving usually deals in retrospect. The word 
^^remembrance" is a natural companion for 
the word * thanksgiving. " Already many 
of ns have sent our minds back along the 
path of the year, that we might find here 
and there evidences of God's goodness. We 
search the record of the past, and in that 
record we find God. We are all historians 
to-day. We bind together the documents 

89 



90 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

that have been preserved within our own 
memories. In the completed chapters we find 
cause for faith. We spend onr years as a 
tale that is told; at different points of the 
story we get glimpses of its meaning. At 
such points we thank God. 

But there are uncompleted chapters in 
the taJe. All of you have brought into this 
service plans that have not yet been wrought 
out. Accomplishments may be many; but 
visions are more. This is true in personal 
life. "We do not live in the present alone. 
It is ever a sign of maturity that it holds 
in view the long run. Children are always 
ready to exchange a big future for a small 
present. For a gilded toy or a swift hour 
of pleasure they will mortgage all sorts of 
distant gifts and events. But directly they 
see the folly of short-sightedness. Each life 
has its coming order, and that must be held 
in mind. Four years may be taken out of 
the period of wage-earning in order that in- 
tellectual and moral preparation may be 



THE PEOPHET 91 

sought for the future. It is an hour of 
tragedy for us when the future loses its at- 
tractiveness. As long as the heart can say, 
*^It is better farther on," life keeps its relish. 
If our faith finds Grod in the past, that is 
much. If our faith finds God in the future, 
that is even more. Every man should carry 
within himself the thanksgiving of an his- 
torian; and every man should carry within 
himself the thanksgiving of a prophet. 

The same thing is true in social life, as 
expressed in various institutions. The 
statesman said of Massachusetts, '^The past, 
at least, is secure." That was a reason for 
gratitude. Yet the heart of a great State 
would not have been satisfied with that alone. 
There is a sense in which every mau may 
be said to be a Hebrew prophet. He dreams 
of a social future. He tries to secure that 
future by his faith and work. Watch his 
conversation, and you will note the recur- 
rence of the words *'some day." ''Some 
day" this will be; ''some day" that will 



92 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

come to pass. Now, tlie Hebrew prophet 
had just such a phrase. It is repeated again 
and again in the Book of Isaiah. Probably 
two score of times we read of what will hap- 
pen ''in that day." *'That day'' is out yon- 
der. Occasionally the prophet saw ''that 
day" so clearly that he broke out into 
thanksgiving. He praised God for what was 
coming. There are two moods in the Book 
of Isaiah, whether there are two authors or 
not. "That day" is the burden of the 
early part of the prophecy. Light and dark- 
ness are set over against each other. This 
day of imperfection is contrasted with "that 
day" of perfection. Amid the hard condi- 
tions the prophet finds comfort in the bright 
prospects. 

It is often said that the Hebrew prophet 
was a forth-teller rather than a fore-teller. 
There is something of truth in this poor play 
on words. The prophet was not a fortune- 
teller in the ordinary meaning of the term- 
even as it applies to nations. His aim was 



THE PROPHET 93 

not to satisfy tlie greedy curiosity of tlie 
people concerning the coming time. Prob- 
ably we have blundered in trying to work 
small details into bis meaning. But be knew 
God; and be knew tbe moral order. Give 
tbose terms of knowledge, and mucb more 
follows. Rigbt attitudes toward God and tbe 
moral order would inevitably carry a people 
in a certain direction ; wrong attitudes would 
just as inevitably carry tbem in tbe opposite 
direction. Even as in individual cases we 
are able to propbesy witb accuracy tbe moral 
and social goal, so in national cases we may 
do mucb tbe same. Tbe process is longer 
and more complicated; but tbe rule is quite 
as assured. Tbe glib unbeliever may say 
tbat God is on tbe side of tbe heaviest bat- 
talions, and in particular instances bis re- 
mark seems correct. Yet tbe long run of 
history comes forward witb another lesson. 
God is never very long on the side of a bad 
nation, even if it does have the heaviest bat- 
talions. Tbe bad nation directly loses its 



94 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

heavy battalions. A dninken nation pawns 
its valuables in the markets of the world just 
as surely as does a drunken man. The trans- 
action is a longer one, and he who can not 
see the far tendencies may be deceived. 
When Eome gets an unsound heart she is on 
the way to dissolution; when Israel gets an 
unsound heart she is on the way to cap- 
tivity; and when America gets an unsound 
heart she will take the road to destruction. 
It was this trend that the Hebrew prophet 
saw— and he saw it vividly. 

But he saw the other side of the law ; and 
he saw the other side of men. He believed 
in God; he believed in God's law; he believed 
in men. In a real way his glorious prophecy 
concerning ^Hhat day" was a tribute to 
human nature. The coming order was based 
on the faith that God was good, and that 
eventually God would have good men to 
co-operate with Himself. Often we say : 

** Truth crushed to earth will rise again; 
The eternal years of God are hers." 



THE PROPHET 95 

We may imagine that our faith is solely 
in Grod and in God's truth; bnt our faith is 
likewise in men. We know that truth will 
rise only when men lift it up; and we con- 
fidently believe that men will do that very 
thing. Truth does not work automatically; 
it works humanly— that is, through men. It 
becomes incarnate. The charge has been 
made that the Christian religion does not 
respect human nature; but the charge is far 
from true. Our religion has such respect for 
human nature that it is forever prophesying 
the day when that nature will co-operate with 
God in the perfect life. The Hebrew prophet 
hurled terrific charges against humanity; 
and yet his long faith in humanity was su- 
perb. The figures that moved in the glory 
of *^that day" were not the figures of angels ; 
they were the figures of men. All our visions 
of the coming order are splendid compli- 
ments for humanity. It is small wonder that 
the prophet praised God for the coming peo- 
ple. The whole creation waits and groans 



96 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

for the revealing of the sons of God ; and the 
social order waits for the same revelation. 
The prophet always believes that the sons of 
God are on their way hither, and he hears 
their marching over great distances. 

Even though the government of Israel 
and that of our republic are different, there 
are some true parallels between the confi- 
dences of the two peoples. Israel clamored 
for a king; but she never shook herself free 
from the ideal of a theocracy. In the last 
analysis a perfect democracy will be a vir- 
tual theocracy. Men say that the cure of 
the evils of democracy is more democracy. 
Just now the slogan is, ''Back to the peo- 
ple!'' The cure of the evils of democracy 
is more democracy— provided only that the 
more democracy is better democracy. The 
problem is twofold: to have the rule of the 
people, and to have the right sort of people 
to do the ruling. The splendid thing about 
democracy is its trust of the people. Dis- 
appointed over and over again, that trust 



THE PEOPHET 97 

persists. Eepublics rise and flourish for a 
season ; then they die. They tell ns that they 
have usually lived about two hundred years, 
and that then the throne of the people falls. 
All this makes it but more significanf that 
humanity still believes in democracy. We 
speak of 'Hhe land of the free and the home 
of the brave/' even when we know that we 
are talking ideals rather than actuals. The 
enslaved are with us yet; and the cowards 
are not all buried. Yet still do we look for 
the coming order. "We see the time when 
men shall work with God for each other. 
The Hebrew prophet arises within us and 
heralds the era of peace and righteousness. 
Some may say that the faith is blind; but 
nearsightedness is not full sight. There are 
still men who are blind because they can not 
see afar off. The true democrat must be 
credited with a most worthy faith in hu- 
manity. He sees this day with its evils ; but 
he sees 'Hhat day" with its perfections. He 
ventures upon the theory that men will 
7 



98 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

yield to the inner rule of Christ, and so bring 
the outer rule into harmony. He joins Ed- 
win Markham in the song, like unto that to 
be heard in the land of Judah: 

*'And social architects who build the State, 
Serving the Dream at citadel and gate, 
Will hear Him coming through the labor hum, 
And glad quick cries will go from man to man : 
*Lo, He has come, our Christ the artisan — 
The King who loved the lilies, He has come.' " 

J£i.e man who lives with that Dream can not 
' stop short of thanksgiving. He will be grate- 
ful for the God who works with men, and 
grateful for the men who work with God. 

This prophet's faith was not daunted by 
the vision of perfect social order under the 
rule of God. He saw a redeemed city, and 
that is about the hardest thing for any man 
to see. Where human population, and so 
human expression, masses itself, the problem 
grows more intense. The moral feeling of 
great centers so often resembles the moral 
feeling of a mob. A mob is the most piti- 



THE PEOPHET 99 

less thing on earth; the madness of many 
seems to be focused in one spirit. The law 
that makes righteousness kindle in the great 
congregation until the hope and longing of 
all other hearts in the assemblage take strong 
hold upon each heart, has its baneful side. 
This is seen when deliberative bodies go 
wild ; and it is seen in its most virulent form 
when multitudes give way to a common gust 
of passion. But when that law shall have 
its chance to work with the right men, the 
city should become the best place on earth. 
Then truly can we say, *^We have a strong 
city." The '* mob-consciousness," as the so- 
ciologists call it, will be converted into a 
brother-consciousness. It is a far cry to 
*^that day;" but he who really sees its com- 
ing can engage in a prophet's thanksgiving. 
Nor are there wanting evidences that we 
are moving steadily, however slowly, toward 
''that day." It is easy to mistake revela- 
tions of wickedness for increase of wicked- 
ness. The first effect of the revelations is 



100 THANKSaiVINa SEEMONS 

that people deem their times degenerate, 
whereas the revelations may he tokens of 
the real improvement. If insurance frauds 
have flourished for many years and now 
stand exposed, the exposure may he the sign 
of the hetter day. If graft has gorged itself 
on the city life and is now tried and pun- 
ished, the prosecution may he the proof of 
the city's hetterment. The overturning of 
the stone and the letting in of light does not 
create the slimy things that scurry for an- 
other cover. The word ^* reform" is in the 
air. Candidates use it as a political rally- 
cry. Reform governors are appearing in 
various States. Reform mayors enter the 
contests in our cities. If the critic shall say 
that the candidates are using the good word 
as a key to public office, we may well be glad 
that the time has come when the word is 
so popular! Even this speaks of a growth 
of moral feeling. Men feel to-day that we 
are having a purified passion of citizenship. 
"We shall have our reactions, it may be ; but 



THE PKOPHET 101 

the movement is onward. When private citi- 
zens give lavish sums for civic improvement ; 
when a whole nation watches with keen in- 
terest the contest for reform in each center ; 
when the people press the city-reformer on 
to the governorship of a State, and then, it 
may be, into the Presidency of the nation— 
the signs of the times indicate that ^Hhat 
day" is a little nearer. For this we may 
thank God. 

But the danger is that the movement shall 
not be grounded in the human spirit. The 
Hebrew prophet saw afar, and he saw 
*^adeep." He knew that ^^that day" could 
come only as God wrought in the souls of 
men. Judaism was not the narrow thing that 
we have often described. It gathered *'all 
nations" into its heart. Jerusalem was to 
be the joy of the whole earth. The kingdom 
of righteousness was to come by an inner 
process. The favorite outward symbol of 
its coming was the disappearance of coarser 
weapons and defenses. In the second chap- 



102 THANKSGIVINa SERMONS 

ter of Isaiah we see tlie weapons vanishing 
Tinder that gentle edict that moves from 
God's house: *'And it shall come to pass in 
the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's 
house shall be established in the top of the 
mountains, and shall be exalted above the 
hills; and all nations shall flow into it. And 
many people shall go and say. Come ye, and 
let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to 
the house of the God of Jacob; and He will 
teach us His ways, and we will walk in His 
paths : for out of Zion shall go forth the law, 
and the word of the law from Jerusalem. 
And He shall judge among the nations, and 
shall rebuke many peoples; and they shall 
beat their swords into plowshares, and their 
spears into pruning-hooks ; nation shall not 
lift up sword against nation, neither shall 
they learn war any more.'' So did the 
prophet see the weapons disappearing in the 
fires of the forge to come out as tools of a 
productive life. 

Here in the text the prophet sees the 



THE PEOPHET 103 

defenses vanishing. The walls fall down; 
they give way to a spiritual substitute. 
Some one said recently that we needed now 
**a moral equivalent for war;" Isaiah found 
a spiritual equivalent for one of the defenses 
in war. He reversed the code of his age. 
Instead of saying, ^^We have a strong city; 
walls will we appoint for salvation, ' ' he said, 
'^We have a strong city; salvation will God 
appoint for walls and bulwarks." He fore- 
told higher protections that have now been 
realized. Babylon and Jerusalem were sur- 
rounded by high walls; New York and Lon- 
don are open on every side. The modern 
cities are far from perfect, and the civili- 
zations which they typify are not perfect; 
but something has taken the place of walls 
and bulwarks. The salvation is by no means 
complete; yet the prophet's vision seems not 
so far away. The trade of war will dis- 
appear. Even now the main argument for 
a large army, and especially for a large navy, 
is that their presence will tend to preserve 



104 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

peace. Their needfulness is seen in the fact 
that they may make themselves needless! 
The logic that abolished dueling is sure to 
abolish war. The poet sees ^^that day" as 
well as the prophet, and Longfellow in ' ^ The 
Arsenal at Springfield" joins with Isaiah: 

*Down the dark future, through long generations. 

The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease? 
And like a bell, with solemn sweet vibrations, 

I hear once more the voice of Christ say, * Peace ! ' 

''Peace ! and no longer from its brazen portals 

The blast of war' s great organ shakes the skies ! 
But beautiful as songs of the immortals. 
The holy melodies of love arise." * 

The path leading to that final peace is 
righteousness. The prophet keeps true to 
God's order. The wisdom that is from above 
is first pure, then peaceable. The righteous 
nation enters the city; and then God keeps 
it in peace. When Jerusalem lost her right- 
eousness the triple walls did not save her. 
Her feeble soldiers surrendered the city with- 

* Household Edition, p. 79. 



THE PEOPHET 105 

out a battle. The city that conquered Jeru- 
salem was in its turn to show that walls and 
bulwarks were not enough. Babylon's walls 
were fifty- six miles in circumference, three 
hundred feet high, and so wide that eight 
horses could be driven abreast on the heights. 
For all that the city had her last night of ter- 
ror and slaughter. How strange that it takes 
the world so long to learn the lesson that 
salvation is a real wall and a real bulwark! 
Years ago one of our great cities found out 
the prophet's meaning, even though it did 
not think of the prophet's name. It became 
hostess to the national convention of a young 
people's society. Between fifty and sixty 
thousand young men and women invaded her 
streets and thronged her hotels. They talked 
and sung of salvation beneath two mighty 
tents and in all the churches. The city was 
captured by the Christian spirit. The news- 
papers filled their columns with glowing ac- 
counts. Thieves ceased their pilfering; bul- 
lies ceased their fighting; drunkards ceased 



106 THANKSGIVINa SERMONS 

their excess ; and the chief of police reported 
an absence of crime nnequaled in many 
years. The city had the higher protection 
against the lower dangers. Salvation was 
appointed for walls and bulwarks. An at- 
mosphere did what the weapons of police- 
men and the walls of prison had not done. 
The gates of the city opened to a righteous 
people that kept the truth, and the city was 
given peace. 

In his great volume on ^^The Book of 
Isaiah*' George Adam Smith declares that 
*Hrue patriotism is the conscience of our 
country's sins." He says: '^All prophets 
and poets of patriotism have been moralists 
and satirists as well. From Demosthenes to 
Tourgenieff, from Dante to Mazzini, from 
Milton to Russell Lowell, from Bums to 
Heine, one can not recall any great patriot 
who has not known how to use the scourge 
as well as the trumpet." * All this is true. 
Nor can one recall any great patriot who 

•p. 89. 



THE PEOPHET 107 

did not hold the conviction that his nation 
was charged with some vast service, and that 
in season that service would be rendered. 
Here again the Israelites and the Americans 
resemble each other. As the Jews believed 
that they had a mission for the whole earth, 
so have we believed that our country was to 
be one of God's instruments in bringing in 
**that day." This is the meaning of the 
Statue of Liberty in the harbor of the East. 
We may sometimes offend other peoples by 
the gTandiloquent way in which we make our 
claim ; and we may not always seem to leave 
room for other nations in the plan of God! 
Still that conviction has its justice. If God 
be the God of nations, He has assigned us 
our proportionate part in working out His 
vast social design. The way forward is a 
way of righteousness. ^'Eighteousness ex- 
alteth a nation." It does more. It saves 
a nation; and it preserves a nation's mis- 
sion. After all, this is the true exaltation. 
For that vision of our country's life we may 



108 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

be grateful. So on this holiday we may 
thank God for what He has wrought in our 
past by the work of noble men; and we can 
thank Him, as well, for what we believe He 
will accomplish by the services of a Chris- 
tian citizenship. 

One of the mountains of the great West 
gives a striking picture which devout men 
have been quick to use as an illustration, even 
if they do not take it as a sign. We have all 
heard of the Mountain of the Holy Cross. 
Two immense gulches intersect each other 
like transverse beams. The hand of God, 
working with the tools of earthquake and 
frost, has made yawning spaces between the 
rocks of the hills. In the winter season the 
snow fills the gulches and is packed solidly 
into the depths beyond the reach of the 
warmth that melts. The spring comes. In 
other places the snow yields to the heat and 
trickles down into the valleys. But long 
after the tops of the mountains have shed 
the white coverin.s: the unmelted snow shines 



THE PEOPHET 109 

in those vast creases. Through all the heat 
of summer and of autumn that gleaming 
cross remains upon the height, shining be- 
fore the eyes of travelers like an open box 
of diamonds. It is small wonder that the 
Christian patriot seizes upon the symbol and 
turns it into a prophecy. The Cross of 
Christ is to be stamped upon our land; the 
Cross of Christ is to be stamped upon the 
hearts of our people. We greet each other 
with the prophet's thanksgiving; we greet 
our country with the prophetic song: 

Our thought of thee is glad with hope. 
Dear country of our love and prayer ; 

Thy way is down no fatal slope. 
But up to freer sun and air, 

*With peace that comes of purity. 

And strength to simple justice due, 
So runs our loyal dream of thee. 
God of our fathers ! make it true.*' 



THE THANKFULNESS OF THE 
SAVIOR 



THE COMPLETE THANKSGIVING 

Text: ''And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and 
said, Father, I tUanh Thee/'— J0B.IS xi, 41. 

If Christ is to be tlie leader of our moods 
as well as of our actions, it would seem wise 
to make a study of His thanksgivings. At 
this season of the year we are apt to turn to 
the Psalms and adopt their praises as our 
own; or it may be that we turn to the writ- 
ings of Paul as representing the higher and 
more spiritual types of gratitude. From 
these sources we have drawn help, and our 
hearts have been stirred into keener appre- 
ciations. But if we have one Perfect Exem- 
plar, why may we not go to Him to learn 
the lesson of gratitude f Why shut ourselves 
in with the lesser lights when the sun is shin- 
ing and we may walk in its radiance! 

8 113 



114 THANKSGmxa SEEMONS 

This question is so natural, though so 
surprising, that we wonder why we have not 
asked it before and oftener. We have made 
Christ our guide in meekness, in kindness, 
and in the purest kinds of joy; but we have 
not thought to consult Him in reference to 
the way of thankfulness. We have been 
grateful to Him on Thanksgiving Day, but 
probably we have never sought to be grate- 
ful like Him. He has been the goal of our 
gratitude rather than its guide, whereas He 
should be both guide and goal. Our adora- 
tion of the Teacher will be but more fervent 
if we really learn His lesson. We shall only 
praise Christ the better if we keep our holi- 
day in His praising spirit. 

Doubtless our failure to come to Jesus 
for the lesson of thankfulness grows out of 
the failure of our religious teachers to lead 
us in that sacred direction. Centuries ago 
Thomas a Kempis wrot« his ^'Imitation of 
Christ;" you will search its pages long ere 
you find any word that tells us to imitate 



THE SAVIOE 115 

Christ in the mode and mood of our thanks- 
giving. Not many years since James Stalker 
wrote his ** Imago Christi." In that book 
we study the concrete example of the Savior 
in relation to the home, the Church, society, 
work, suffering, controversy: but we find no 
chapter about His gratitude. We turn to the 
section on ** Christ as a Man of Feeling," 
hoping that there the expression of His grati- 
tude will be set forth for our instruction. 
We look in vain. We find a discussion of 
His Compassion, His Sensitiveness, His In- 
dignation, His Delicacy, and His Modesty; 
we find no treatment of His Thankfulness. 
But the Bible is an open Book, and some les- 
sons lie upon its surface for the seeing heart. 
So we may go on an independent search for 
the Savior's instruction on the subject of 
Thanksgiving. 

What, then, do the writings tell us con- 
cerning the thanksgiving of Jesus? The 
revelation is not a long one; but it is com- 
plete, and we shall find crowded within it a 



116 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS 

proper leadership for our feeling. The uni- 
versal quality in the teaching and living of 
Jesus is often pointed out. It has a certain 
evidential value and makes an appeal of its 
own kind. This quality appears in the prin- 
ciples set forth by the Master. It was mani- 
festly impossible that He should give de- 
tailed instructions as to conduct. In such a 
case the Gospels would have grown to fear- 
ful bulk, becoming tomes rather than hand- 
books. In addition, men might have become 
slavish followers of rules rather than vital 
exponents of gTeat principles. Yet the teach- 
ing of Jesus, by word and act, touches the 
center of all life. It is singular that those 
who most vehemently indict His followers 
do not indict His instructions. More often 
they use His instructions to place His fol- 
lowers in an unfavorable light. The prin- 
ciples of Jesus are universal. 

The like thing has often been said of His 
temptation. However one may construe that 
series of pictures, it is a true drama of life. 



THE SAVIOE lir 

All liTiman temptations may be classed un- 
der the three heads. The assaults made 
against the will of Christ exhaust the pos- 
sible approaches of evil. If one should care 
to say that the story of the Lord's tempta- 
tion was an invention, he must allow that the 
inventor had a shrewd and comprehensive 
insight into life. The universal quality is in 
the account. 

Do the thanksgivings of Jesus likewise 
have the characteristic of the universal ? Do 
they go out in all the possible directions of 
human gratitude? If so, they must deal 
with the physical, the social, the intellectual, 
and the spiritual. They must suggest all the 
channels through which the joy and good- 
ness of life flow in upon man's nature; and 
they must not stop short of that communion 
with God for which the heart of man is 
made. A study of Christ's thanksgivings 
will reveal again this universal mark. We 
do well to take them in the apparent order 
of their importance and so apply them that 



118 THAXKSGmXG SEEMOXS 

we may be constrained to follow Clirist along 
the pa til of gratitnde. 

The first case of pnblic thanksgiving that 
we find recorded of the Master was called 

/j forth by the presence of material blessings. 
A gi'eat company has followed Him into the 
region beyond a lake. The snn has set : and 
the people, now that the exciting day has 
closed, become aware of their hmiger and 
faintness. He had compassion on them and 
was making ready for the most dramatic of 
all His miracles. The thousands are seated 
npon the gronnd and are looking with won- 
dering eyes at Him who prepares to be their 
host. They hear the conversation of the 
Master with His disciples ; then they see one 
of His closest friends lead forward a lad who 
carries in his hand a wee basket. Jesus took 
the food from the child, five loaves and two 
fishes. Before proceeding with that marvel 
and mercy He bent over the humble fare and 

^' '^gave thanks.'' We need not now discuss 
whether His thanksgiving was for the lim- 



THE SAYIOE 119 

ited food provided by the child, or for the 
unlimited food that was to move forth from 
the divine power, or for both. In any case, 
He gave thanks for material food. He thus 
set the example that has been so widely fol- 
lowed through the Christian centuries, and 
offered thanks for physical benefits. All 
four of the Gospels record the miracle; all 
four, likewise, record that its Author looked 
to God in gratitude. We have thus our 
Lord's example for offering thanks for those 
gifts which supply the needs of our bodies. 
In this respect we shall do weU to follow His 
leading. 

While it is both wise and pious to have 
the upward look of heart before partaking, 
of our food, it may be that we do not give a 
wide enough significance to this particular 
form of giving thanks. It ought to be the 
occasion for bringing to our 'thought the be- 
nevolent relation that God holds to the 
lowest wants of life, the blessed moment 
when we recognize that food, shelter, cloth- 



120 THANKSaiVINa SEEMONS 

ing, and all kindred gifts come from Him. 
Trace the history of any article upon the 
board and it leads yon in the end straight to 
God; there is no stopping-place short of the 
Infinite Hand and the Infinite Heart. Each 
portion of food has its story of divine ascent. 
Babcock's verse does not state it too vividly: 

Back* of the loaf is the snowy flour. 
And back of the flour the mill ; 
I And back of the mill is the wheat, and the 

shower, 
And the sun, and the Father's \\all."^ 

Follow up the path down which any physical 
blessing has come, and yon can not stop until 
yon reach God. Eeverently and rightly, 
therefore, can we follow Him who held in 
His hands the ^ve loaves and the two 
fishes, and who thanked God for physical 
blessings. 

Now, this first lesson is in accord with 
onr own idea of thanksgiving. We have put 
the festival day at the close of the harvest 

*" THoughts for Every-Day Living," p. 167. 



THE SAVIOR 121 

time, when tlie fruitage of the field has been 
gathered into the granaries and the year 
reaches its climax of benefit. Judged in com- 
parison with the deeper blessings, physical 
benefits may be of little consequence; but 
judged alone and as essential phases of the 
life that now is, they bulk large in the list 
of blessings. If he is material in his sense 
of life who does not rise on Thanksgiving 
Day above the thought of the harvest, it is 
just as true that he is only partial in his 
gratitude who does not see that material 
blessings must be worthy of our thanksgiving 
since they were worthy of the thanksgiving 
of Christ. Here we may safely follow our 
Lord^s lead. 

The gifts for which the Savior gave thanks 
represent a vast area of divine power. The 
loaves have their history, and we do not stop 
until they have taken us to the field where 
grows the grain, to the skies whence fall the 
showers, to the sun whence comes the heat. 
Ere we have done with our study we find that 



122 THANKSGIVINa SEEMONS 

those barley cakes have an alliance with all 
the powers of earth. The fish have their 
history, and we do not stop nntil we see the 
stream, the river, the lake, the sea. Ere we 
have done with onr study here, we find that 
those small products have an alliance with 
all the world of waters. If the giving of 
thanks at onr meals could frequently get this 
sweep of outlook, it would soon lose all for- 
mality and would move onward into the Sav- 
ior's spirit. Therefore, at this season let 
us come to the mountain side and see the 
Lord as He gives thanks for physical bless- 
ings. Then let us thank God for food, for 
raiment, for shelter, for the beauties of 
earth, for the glories of the skies, for that 
ceaseless care which extends even to our 
bodies and allows joy to enter through these 
lower channels of our being. For it is writ- 
ten, *'And He took the loaves and gave 
thanks." 

But if we are to follow Christ fully we 
must go higher than this. "We pass now into ^ 



THE SAVIOE 123 

a more intimate scene. This time the Savior 
is not with the multitude, but rather with 
His disciples alone. We go into an upper 
room, away from the noise of the streets 
and fields. We enter the circle of disciple- 
ship. The Master and the twelve have just 
finished a meal ; they have called it the Pass- 
over. At its close the Lord arises and, tak- 
ing in His hand bread and wine, He again 
gives thanks. In this there must be a mean- 
ing different from that noted in the previous 
instance. '^When He had given thanks, He 
gave it unto them." How often have we 
heard those words as we have come to the 
Lord's table! Why did Christ give thanks 
here? Was it for physical blessings again? 
It could not have been merely this; for the 
physical things now were being used as em- 
blems. Christ then must have given thanks 
for that which was signified. 

It is singular that the action of the Lord 
has frequently given the name to the Holy 
Communion and that we often speak of it as 



124 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

the Eucharist or Thanksgiving. Was Christ 
giving thanks for the fellowship symbolized 
by that ancient feast! It mnst have been so. 
He rejoiced that there were those to whom 
He had come close enough so that they would 
remember Him and would bring His remem- 
brance to countless others. His vision must 
have swept down the years until it embraced 
the communion of all saints, until He saw 
those who would kneel at many altars in sol- 
emn renewal of a covenant of eternal friend- 
ship with Himself. Small wonder is it that 
He gave thanks when He instituted the Holy 
Supper ! It was a sign of the sacredest and 
highest association, the emblem of what He 
was willing to do for those whom He loved, 
and of what they in their turn were willing 
to do for Him. So when material things 
were transferred into signs of fellowship 
Jesus gave thanks. 

Without seeking to expound the ^'fellow- 
ship of the mystery," let us still hold to 
the nearer end of this great truth. We can 



THE SAVIOE 125 

well thank God for our associations. If we ^ 
were to be deprived of all those who have 
been near to our lives in the year gone, iso- 
lated and left only to ourselves, how much 
of life's joy would die? We have had our 
fellowships and friendships; we have been 
in the communion of those who have under- 
stood and loved us; we have taken bread 
from the hands of those who would make sac- 
rifices for us— even from the hands of some 
who would die for us. It may be that we 
have known the yet dearer joy of breaking 
bread with those for whom daily we gave our 
lives and for whose good we were glad to 
pledge all our powers. In this case we can 
rise, as did Christ at the founding of the 
Communion, and give God our thanks. 

We can see quickly how this second in- 
stance of the Savior ^s thanksgiving fits into 
our thought for this season. Thanksgiving 
has become the festival of the home, the holi- 
day of more intimate communion. In being 
grateful for the inner circle of those who 



126 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

share our thouglits, carry our griefs, exult i 
in our joys and successes, we move near to 
the Savior's spirit when He offered thanks 
before the institution of the sacrament of 
fellowship. We have thus a holy precedent 
for the gratitude and fellowship that shall 
fill our hearts on each Thanksgiving Day. 
If you can still look into the face of your 
mother in filial communion, you may well 
thank God. If you can still have your fa- 
ther's blessing, you may well thank God. If 
you can speak to wife and child and know 
the joy that completes itself in parenthood, 
you may well thank God. 

This gratitude can go beyond and above 
the earth. If you believe that those who have 
departed have only passed into the shelter 
of the Father's house, still may you be grate- 
ful. When Whittier wrote his **Snow 
Bound" he spoke of one who had gone 
within a year, and writes thus gratefully of 
his memory and his hope as if he pierced the 
veil and stood again face to face: 



THE SAVIOE 127 



c< 



And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee. 

Am I not richer than of old ? 
Safe in thy immortality, 

What change can reach the wealth I hold ? 

What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me ? 
And while in life's late afternoon. 

Where cool and long the shadows grow, 
I walk to meet the night that soon 

Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
I can not feel that thou art far. 
Since near at need the angels are ; 
And when the sunset gates unbar. 

Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
And, white against the evening star. 

The welcome of thy beckoning hand ?*' * 

Thus we may follow Jesus in being grateful 
for our nearer associations, grateful for the 
joy that flows in upon us from our domestic 
and social circle. For it is written of the 
symbol of communion, ^^When He had given// 
thanks He gave it unto them." 

This carries us to the third instance of 
the thanksgiving of Jesus. In one Gospel 
the context indicates that He has heard the 

* Household Edition, p. 290 



^) 



128 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS I 

victorious report of the Seventy as they have I 
returned from their journey. He sees that 
His disciples have gotten hold of life's deep- 
est and sublimest truth and have set it to 

effective work. Then He thanks God that ; 
the way to truth is open and catholic, say-v^ 

ing: ''I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven ; 

and earth, that Thou hast hidden these things \ 

from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed j 

them unto babes. Even so. Father, for so 1 

it seemed good in Thy sight." i 

Stripping this language of what is nega- ; 

tive or modifying, and stating the positive | 

meaning only, we have this thanksgiving, j 

'^I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and J 

earth, that Thou hast revealed these things." ^ 

It is a pean of revelation. The words are ; 

not an indictment of proper wisdom and pru- ' 

dence in the search for truth. They are ' 
rather an attack upon a certain spirit of self- 
sufficiency that gets in the way of truth. 

Jesus viewed truth as one of God's realms, i 
As the way into the spiritual kingdom was 



THE SAVIOR 129 

through the gate of humility, so the way into 
the intellectual kingdom was through the 
same gate. The lowest truths are revealed 
to the open mind; the highest truths are re- 
vealed to the open mind. When, therefore, 
Christ pays tribute to the spirit by which 
men reach the truth, He pays tribute to the 
truth itself. The road is glorified by the 
destination to which it leads. When we 
speak well of the Appian Way our compli- 
ment is for Rome. 

As Jesus thanks God for revelation, so 
does He thank God for the human spirit that « 
makes revelation possible. And as He was 
universal in His nature, so do we find a uni- 
versal touch in His reference here. He does 
not give thanks for a limited aristocracy of 
intellect, but for a democracy of spirit that 
brings truth near to all men. Revelation 
flows most readily to the childlike, to those 
who are simple and trustful in their ap- 
proaches, to those who are willing to ask 
questions without fear of betraying their ig- 



130 THANKSam:NG SEEMONS 

norance. Tlie Seventy liad seen some things 
wliich the mere scholar had not seen. They 
were to be the fonnders of many schools, 
the advance guard of hosts of learners. 
More than this, in their simple fashion they 
had TTon for their minds and hearts certain 
great conceptions that were to defeat the 
world-systems of their day and were to make 
new empires and even a new world. 

We may well follow Jesus in His thanks- 
giving here. How much less life would 
mean if there were no truth to gain ; if y/ 
there were no mind to receive; if there 
were no open way to the deepest and high- 
est knowledge, save for a cold and critical 
intellectuality! How poor would life be if 
it crawled to its food each day and knew 
only that it depended upon coarser bread 
alone! How low and degrading would life's 
associations be if they expressed merely the 
instinct of the herd and had no exchange of 
the truth! But every place on earth is a 
room iQ the school of God, and the true 



THE SAVIOE 131 

scholars are those who, putting aside con- 
ceit and prejudice, wait to hear the Teacher's 
voice. We may well thank God that we have 
caught some of His revelations in this past 
year, for the larger meaning that has come^! 
to the world through them, for the increase '' 
that has been thus granted to our own na- 
tures, and for the finer, steadier character 
that has been given us because we were hum-^ 
ble disciples in the Master's College. )t 

Especially can we be grateful if we have 
been simple and trustful enough to accept 
the truth as it is in Jesus. The greatest 
truth comes by humble faith. The mystery 
of our faith is just as great to the scholar 
as it is to the child. Indeed, it may appear 
to be even greater; for the child may grasp 
it all by trust and may walk where the 
scholar will stumble. Who are promised the 
vision of God? Those that are wise of mind 
and versed in the lore of the world? Not so ! 
*^The pure in heart shall see God." Who 
shall know of the doctrine? Those that 



132 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

study theology and spend the years in ap- 
plying mere intellect to religion? Not so! 
''If any man willeth to do His will, he shall 
know of the doctrine whether it be of God." 
The real saint is a very sure person. 
y/ Jesus thanked God that the doors of 
purity and obedience stood open. Within 
the one is the vision of God's face, within the 
other is the growing certainty of God's truth. 
Is it not right that at Thanksgiving time we 
should thank God for the simplicity and ac- 
cessibility of every real gospel of life, 
whether revealed in God's world or in God's 
Son? May we not join with Christ in this 
form of gratitude, saying: ''Father, I know )) 
but little. Mysteries are thick about me. I 
can not reach Thee by wisdom and prudence. 
But Thou dost come to the humble in heart. 
I thank Thee that in my purest moments I 
see Thee most truly, and that Thou dost re- 
veal Thy truth and Thyself to one who wills 
to do Thy will!" 

Yet we must not stop Here. In the first 



THE SAVIOR 133 

instance we have readied God tlirougli ma- 
terial blessings; in the second instance we 
have reached Him through the hearts of onr 
beloved; in the third instance we have 
reached Him through the revelation of His t 
truth. But if we are to be most truly grate- 
ful we must come to God in immediate rela- 
tions. We must approach until we stand 
face to face with Him. 

Here we come upon the final case of the 
Savior's thanksgiving. He has prayed at 
the grave of Lazarus. The onlookers stand 
in amazement and expectancy. *^And Jesus 
lifted up His eyes, and said, Father, I thank 
Thee that Thou hast heard Me; and I know 
that Thou hearest Me always." 

This was gratitude because the way to 
God was open, and the door stood ajar, and 
within was the listening Father. Now, what 
a cause of thanksgiving is here revealed! 
We have been grateful that we could find 
God's gifts to our bodies, that by our indus- 
try, and patience, and skill, we have been 



.-^ 



134: THANKSGIVINa SERMONS 

able to appropriate physical blessings to our 
lives. We bave been grateful, too, for tbe 
gifts to our social natures, for our friends 
who are deeply interested in our welfare and 
whose fortune is all bound up with our own. 
We have been grateful for God's gifts to 
our intellectual natures, for that wide free 
way that leads to the realm of truth. But 
have we been grateful that we can reach 
God, that He is near and waits to hear our 
call ? Have we followed Christ in this higher 
y thankfulness, saying, ^^ Father, I thank Thee 
that Thou hast heard me; and I knew that 
Thou hearest me always!" If we have 
failed in this, surely we have been thought- 
less indeed. For can you think of anything 
that calls for more gratitude than just sim- 
ply this: God is always within hearing dis- 
tance, always within helping reach, always 
responsive to the approach of love? 

And how near this final form of the Sav- 
ior's thankfulness comes to our holiday! 
For what is the meaning of this prescribed 



THE SAVIOR 135 

feast? Is it not that God does hear? What 
use to speak to Him and say that we are 
grateful for His mercies if He pays no heed 
to us? And if God hears us when we tell 
Him of our gratitude, does He not hear us 
when we tell Him of our need? Does not 
this Thanksgiving Day in the last analysis 
of its meaning teach us that we may share 
this mood of gratitude with Jesus and say 
with Him, ^'Father, I thank Thee that Thou 
hast heard me?" We shall all see to it that 
the day brings us face to face with God. i 
In some of its precious moments let us push 
aside the physical gifts, push aside the social 
joys, and let us come immediately to Him 
who waits to hear our cry and to be gra- 
cious to us ali For it is written: **And 
Jesus lifted up His eyes, and said, Father, 
I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me." 



VI 

THE THANKFULNESS OF A 
PHARISEE 



THE PERVERSION OF THANKS- 
GIVING 

Text: ^^God, I thank TJiee that I am not as 
other men are/'— Luke xviii, 11. 

Our minds feel driven to place beside 
this complacent word St. Paul's desperate 
plaint, which ends in simple gratitude: '^0 
wretched man that I am ! Who shall deliver 
me from the body of this death? I thank 
God through Jesus Christ our Lord.'' The 
two texts would then represent the thank- 
fulness of two Pharisees. One of these ap- 
pears in a parable; yet to the world he 
appears a real figure. The other appears in 
a history so vast and influential that men 
long ago conceded him the title of the great- 
est man that has walked the earth since 
Jesus died on Calvary. The figure from the 

139 



140 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

parable and the figure from history make an 
effective contrast, considered from any 
standpoint; but the contrast does not lose 
meaning when the two are estimated by the 
spirit of their thanksgivings. 

The fairness of placing a parable-char- 
acter and a world-character over against 
each other in this fashion might be called in 
question. The critic would say: ^^Both par- 
ties in your transaction should be taken 
either from fiction or from history. Why 
mix imagination and fact in this thanksgiv- 
ing contrast?" The reply is that the Phari- 
see of the Master's parable is, after all, a 
very real sort of a character. He is also 
very numerous. We meet him each day. 
The fiction of Jesus was always so true to 
life that His characters walk the earth still 
and seem to us as real as some historic per- 
sonages. The Pharisee of the parable is 
etched quickly. Two or three strokes of the 
artist, and we see the pride of his face and 
the assumed dignity of his bearing. The 



THE PHAEISEB 141 

picture seems vital. Tone works into it ; and 
we hear the voice of complacency. Men have 
discussed whether sound-waves could be de- 
tected in *^The Angelus." However that 
may be, sound-waves may be felt in this par- 
able. So remarkable an impression has it 
made on the world that it fixed for centuries 
the estimate of the Pharisee. Even to this 
day, when men would describe moral egotism 
and the spirit of soul-vaunting, they use the 
adjective * ^ pharisaical. ' ' 

In all this we are doubtless too sweeping 
—especially if we think that all the Phari- 
sees were slaves to this spiritual conceit. 
Let us not forget that Nicodemus was a 
Pharisee; that his restless heart drove him 
to Christ, even though by night; that his 
sense of justice led him to take Christ's part 
against other Pharisees ; and that he brought 
his tribute of myrrh and aloes to the burial 
of our Lord. Nor should we forget that 
Gamaliel, a doctor of the law and a teacher 
of deserved fame, was a Pharisee; that he 



142 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

expressed his fine tolerance before the coun- 
cil of his colleagues and gave out his serene 
faith that God's truth can not be banished 
nor His cause overthrown ; and that the force 
of brutality should not be used against the 
gospel of Christ. Jesus was never so unjust 
as to make a wholesale charge against the 
Pharisees; and we may wisely follow Him 
in this regard. 

Still it must be said that this picture of 
the Pharisee in the parable represents to us 
the danger of any system that emphasizes 
outer conduct as prescribed by formal rules. 
As for the reality of the contrast in the two 
texts, we well know that Paul in one su- 
preme moment of his life was represented by 
the publican in the parable. The spirit that 
asked humble questions just outside Damas- 
cus; that eagerly sought God's follower in 
the street called Straight; that gladly sacri- 
ficed position, pride of ancestry, and material 
good in order that the heart's cry might be 
answered— this spirit is closely akin to the 



THE PHAEISEE 143 

mood of tlie publican on tlie other side of the 
Savior's picture. So we do no violence to 
the truth of life if the Pharisee of the par- 
able and the Pharisee of history, as glorified 
by contact with Jesus Christ, become serv- 
ants of a Thanksgiving warning and lesson. 7 

It is difficult for us to define clearly just 
what was wrong with the Pharisee who said, 
'*God, I thank Thee that I am not as other 
men are." He offends us decidedly. Yet 
his offense is so subtle that we find it hard 
to put it in plain terms of indictment. We 
can not say that he lied to God about his 
conduct. He was not an extortioner nor an 
adulterer. Probably he did fast twice a 
week, and he gave his tithes with exact con- 
scientiousness. He told God the truth about 
his outward life. For all that we do not like 
him. Nor can this be because Jesus puts 
him at a disadvantage, making him a villain 
in a spiritual drama. The Lord nowhere 
questions the truth of his claims. The par- 
able does not end with harsh words even 



lU THANKSaiyiNG SEEMONS 

about his spirit. He did not go down to his 
house ' 'justified;*' and he was '^ abased;" 
this is as far as the lesson takes us. Some- 
how our estimate of this Pharisee seems to 
be so much worse than anything that the par- 
able says about him. We reach a judgment 
without seeing all the path that brings us to 
the judgment. Even after we review the 
processes by which our hearts get their con- 
clusion, we feel no reason for changing our 
opinion; and the Pharisee still stands under 
condemnation. 

All this suggests a rather forbidding sub- 
ject for Thanksgiving Day. Our first im- 
pulse is to ask, *'Is it possible that men can 
enter the temple on such a day as this and 
utterly pervert the spirit of thankfulness?" 
The parable says ''yes," and so do many 
actual scenes that we have beheld and actual 
experiences that we have had. Thanksgiving 
is subject to such temptations as attack pray- 
ing. Selfishness may invade the room in 
which we pray. We might be surprised if 



THE PHAEISEE 145 

we could review the petitions of our lifetime 
to note how many of them were for ourselves, 
and even for our lower selves. ^^Ye ask and 
receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye 
may consume it upon your own pleasures" 
—this is a statement about the possible per- 
version of prayer. We would naturally sup- 7 
pose that the spirit of prayer would purge 
the heart of selfishness. So it would, if it 
were only guarded; but there is careless 
praying. There is likewise careless thank- 
ing. The note of self which appears in a 
prayer for help may likewise appear in a 
prayer of praise. As the one may be a plea 
for self, so may the other be a tribute to self. 
It is just at this point that the Pharisee 
of the parable offends us. The record puts 
if, ^^ Prayed thus with himself/' It is a neat 
and pointed statement of the situation. The 
name of God was on his lips, but his own 
name was in his heart. Under a pretense 
of thanking God he was really thanking him- _j 
self. In this general view we get the fact 

10 



146 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

tliat tlie Holiest moods may be perverted. 
Every great virtue is so nearly related to 
some great vice that the distinction between 
the two is not always easy. Stinginess and 
economy do not lie far apart. Conceit and 
self-respect sometimes look alike. Cowardice 
and prudence may be mistaken, each for the 
other. Deceit may claim the stamp of tact. 
The Pharisee did not know the border lines 
of moral feeling. Hence he mistook self- 
adulation for thanksgiving. He addressed 
God, but he ended with himself. He marched 
clear up by the throne of God in order to 
find the most complimentary way to his own 
soul. The name of God occurs once in his 
plea; his own name occurs ^ye times. Even 
this numerical item does not represent the 
proportion of the two tributes— the one to 
God and the other to his own self. 

God should be our standard on Thanks- 
giving Day. Whenever our praises are 
based upon comparison or contrasts with the 
characters or the lots of others, thankfulness 



THE PHAEISEE 147 

is on its way to defeat. This was the mis- 
take of the Pharisee. He said ''God;" and 
then he forgot about Grod and began to think 
of ' ' other men. ' ' He placed his standard on 
the heights, and then he walked qnickly 
downward to adopt a measurement out of 
the depths. Suppose that he had halted with 
the name of ''Grod!" What humility and 
reverence would have seized him! Isaiah 
went into the temple, saw the vision of God, 
and cried out, ' ' Woe is me ! " This man went 
into the temple, spoke the name of God, and 
pronounced a eulogy on— himself ! He did 
not make God his standard. Had he done 
so he would have felt the more grateful be- 
cause he felt the more unworthy. The Phari- 
see should have stayed longer with God's 
name until his heart had learned its les- 
son. Instead he rushed on past that name, 
and his thanksgiving reached a pitiful anti- 
climax. 

He went on to contrast himself with 
** other men.'' This is a dangerous proceed- 



148 THANKSaiVING SEEMONS 

ing, as well as an odious one. If tlie men 
are above ns, and our thought rests on them 
rather than on God, we shall be driven to 
discontent. If the men are below us we shall 
be driven to the heresy that God has made 
us His special favorites; or else we shall 
drop God's agency out of the transaction al- 
together. This Pharisee contrasted himself 
with an '* extortioner!" Small wonder that 
he gloried in his honor ! He contrasted him- 
self with an ^ ^ adulterer ! " No marvel that 
he took pride in his purity! He leaped to 
the place of conceit. That was the natural 
goal of his method. He made men his standi 
ard rather than God; and he carefully se- 
lected men whose lives were blighted by the 
coarser sins. He looked upon the poor out- 
ward of *^ other men" rather than upward to 
God and then inward upon himself. It is 
possible for all of us to-day to fall into this 
perversion of thanksgiving. God is the end 
of Thanksgiving Day; He is also its stand- 
ard. 



THE PHAEISEE 149 

But, as we have already hinted, there is 
something more of fault in this Pharisee's 
thanksgiving. His test was wrong; so was 
his ascription of credit. He did not see that 
the virtue in those rules that made for right 
living among the Jewish people came from 
God. The Jews had the oracles, but they 
were the ^'oracles of God." Kipling's *^Ee- 
cessional" speaks of the 

''Lesser breeds without the law.** 

Whence came the law! From God! This 
Pharisee told of his own accomplishments. 
His mistake was not in telling a falsehood, 
but in failing to ascribe credit where it be- 
longed. Because he did not fasten his prayer 
to God alone he missed the truth utterly. He 
fasted twice a week; but he never humbled 
his own soul. He gave tithes of all he pos- 
sessed; but his praise of himself revealed 
toward *^ other men" a contempt quite out 
of keeping with a gentle and generous spirit. 
He said, '^God, I thank Thee;'' but that was 



150 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

exactly what lie did not do. We feel it as 
we watch the drama. The cheap poetry- 
states it truly: 

Two went to pray ; or rather say, 
^ One went to brag, the other to pray. 
One stands up close and treads on high 
Where the other dare not lift his eye. 
One nearer to the altar stood. 
The other to the altar's God." 

This man did brag, bnt he did not pray and 
give thanks. Schleirmacher once said that 
the sense of dependence was the basis of re- 
ligion. The Pharisee, then, lacked the very 
basis. Humble dependence is not in his plea. 
It is a recital of personal virtues to his own 
credit. 

George Eliot uses this sharp sentence: 
''I never have any pity for conceited people, 
because I think they carry their comfort 
about with them. ' ' We know well the feeling 
of this word. Yet it does not quite reach to 
the heart of our charge against conceit. We 
have the impression that the vain man vio- 



THE PHAEISEE 151 

lates the trutli of things. He lies to himself 
about himself. While the Pharisee told the 
truth about his outward life, he did not know 
the truth about his inner life; nor did he 
give credit where credit was due. We get 
the impression that he used the name of God 
as a personal advertisement. The genuine 
use of that name always makes for humility. 
The people of New England for many years 
observed both a Thanksgiving Day and a 
Fast Day. Gradually the Fast Day lost ob- 
servance ; at length it was abolished. But the 
real message of the Fast Day can be kept in 
Thanksgiving Day. There is a sense in 
which Thanksgiving Day is a time of humili- 
ation. It is a confession of our dependence. 
It gathers together all the joys and treasures 
of life, orders them into the temple, and 
forces the acknowledgment that they are 
the gifts of God. The Pharisee did not see 
this. He missed the point of a real Thanks- 
giving. Had he gotten the insight of the 
humble he would have added a prayer of 



15^ THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

penitence to Ms prayer of self-praise and 
would have moaned : 

Lord, forgive these words of mine ; 
What have I that is not Thine ? 
Whatso'er I fain would boast 
Needs Thy pardoning pity most.'* * 

All this has its modem reference. Hap- 
pily we are losing the old distinction between 
natural and spiritual goodness. All good- 
ness is of God. The Pharisee of our time, 
who has much to say about his own virtues, 
usually is without the Church. He enter- 
tains the foolish idea that his goodness is 
of his own making. He has not heard dis- 
tinctly the word of God to Cyrus, ^^I girded 
thee, though thou hast not known Me. ' ' The 
mood of Cyrus would have been different if 
he could have gotten that message fully. The 
truth is that many men here to-day have had 
the inner help of God all this year. If God 
helped us only when we thought of Him we 
would quickly sink back into our original 

* Whlttier, Household Edition, p. 282. 



THE PHAEISEE 153 

nothingness. If there is such a thing as a 
'* natural disposition,'' God is its Author. 
The gifts of life all reach back to Him. The 
trouble with the moral man is not his mo- 
rality. Far from it ! The trouble is that he 
does not ascribe the credit for his morality 
to the proper party. There is a light that 
lighteth every man! If the moral men in 
these pews to-day could get a real under- 
standing of themselves and of God, they 
would come to the most genuine Thanksgiv- 
ing they have ever known. They would see 
that the inner gifts as well as the outer gifts 
come from the Father. 

This was the revelation that came at 
length to Paul. He was a Pharisee. There 
was a time when he could have prayed like 
the man in the parable. One day there came 
a new conception. Something happened on 
the edge of that old city. Paul met Christ. 
Explain the dramatic accompaniments as 
you please, the heart of that transaction was 
spiritual. Paul 's soul met the soul of Christ. 



154 THAXKSGmXG SEEMOXS 

From that time on Paul knew that the right 
life consisted not in the following of outward 
rules and rituals, with the ever-felt but sel- 
dom-confessed sense that even the law could 
not be kept without some great inner dy- 
namic. He knew that it was deeper than that 
— that it came from the power of an Infinite 
Savior working within his own heart to will 
and to do of His good pleasure. From the 
Damascus Eoad to the Appian Way, from 
his conversion to his death, Paul bragged no 
more. He made huge claims; but he made 
them in behalf of another. He did not say, 
^ ^ I can do all things. ' ^ That would have been 
boasting. He said, '*I can do all things 
through Christ which strength eneth me." 
That was praise. He came to regard sin as 
a hideous corpse so fastened to life as to 
make its own horrible penalty. He sought 
for deliverance. He found deliverance. He 
broke out into thanksgiving, *^I thank God 
through Jesus Christ our Lord." 

If we will search our own hearts on this 



THE PHAEISEE 155 

Thanksgiving Day we shall all allow that 
Paul's word can not be left out of this fes- 
tival's meaning. In spite of all our miser- 
able evasions, in spite of our twisted motives, 
in spite of our pitiable excuses, we know that 
Christian manhood is the best gift that God 
can offer. Could we feel to-day that we had 
lived a perfect year, speaking always the 
gracious word, doing always the good deed, 
thinking always the right thought, then 
would we know the thankful spirit. But con- 
fessing our imperfections, let us not fail to 
be grateful to-day for the higher gifts. 
There are some here who know what it is to 
be saved through Jesus Christ. One year 
ago you were walking eagerly the path that 
leads to the swine field. You were beginning 
to taste the woes that lie in the dregs of the 
wine cup. You yielded to the gospel of 
Christ. God gave you your freedom. Here 
you are in this service, with treasures of 
character demanding a paean of praise to 
God. If any one shall say that this is not 



156 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

better than added gold, we shall not argne 
with him. He who has felt the struggle 
within, the war of the soul, and who has 
come to peace, kQOws the inner thanksgiving 
and can say, ^^I thank God through Jesus 
Christ our Lord." 

We should not, however, deceive our- 
selves by the use of an extreme illustration. 
The most of us have not known the power 
of the more brutal sins of appetite. Our 
spiritual victories have been in other lines. 
We may not have been sensual like the prod- 
igal; but we may have been selfish like the 
prodigal's brother. We need not make con- 
trasts that would seem to excuse either type 
of sin. On the other hand, we should feel 
the reality of wrong in both. If we have a 
more vivid sense of sin's calamity and a 
more passionate love for righteousness than 
we had a year ago, the God of the year has 
been good to us. He is giving us the deeper 
perspective. He is instructing us in life's 
values. In the final judgment, whether of 



THE PHARISEE 157 

men or of God, all lower gifts will be seen 
as good only as they ministered to the deep- 
est nature of men. Here now let ns hear the 
seraphim cry ont^ *^Holy, holy, holy." That 
cry will make ns conscious of our unworthi- 
ness; conscious of God's goodness; and con- 
scious, also, that God's best gift is conferred 
on the humble spirit. Thus shall we pass 
from the boasting of a Pharisee to the 
thanksgiving of an apostle. '* Andrew Eyk- 
man's Prayer" shall have its answer both 
in heaven and on earth ; the cry for help shall 
issue in the song of gratitude: 

"Thou, O Elder Brother! who 
In Thy flesh our trial knew. 
Thou who hast been touched by these 
Our most sad infirmities. 
Thou alone the gulf can span 
In the dual heart of man. 
And between the soul and sense 
Reconcile all difference. 
Change the dream of me and mine 
For the truth of Thee and Thine, 
And through chaos, doubt, and strife 
Interfuse Thy calm of life. 



i 
158 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 



Haply thus by Thee renewed, | 

In Thy borrowed goodness good, j 

Some sweet morning yet in God*s ' 

Dim, aeonian periods, ' 
Joyiul I shall wake to see 

Those I love who rest in Thee, j 

And to them in Thee allied i 

Shall my soul be satisfied.** i 

I 



VII 

THE THANKFULNESS OF AN 
APOSTLE 



THANKSGIVING FOR HUMAN 
ASSOCIATIONS 

Text: ^^I thank my God upon every remem- 
brance of youJ^—'F-HiL. i, 3. 

This sentence is characteristic of the great 
apostle. Its like is found in all the Epistles 
which he addressed to the scattered groups 
of Christians— save only in that to the Gala- 
tians. The statement has variations, of 
course— sometimes being accompanied by an 
assurance of prayers, sometimes by a list of 
the virtues which call for his praise, some- 
times by a hint of that inner compulsion 
which drove gratitude into expression. Twice 
he declares to the Thessalonians, **We are 
hound to thank God always for you." But 
the central fact remains the same. Paul 

11 161 



162 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

thanked God for his human associations. 
Even this he did in a marked way. He did 
not speak his word of gratitude in privacy; 
he spoke his word so that the people about 
whom he spoke could hear. He told them 
in just so many words that he thanked God 
for them. He seemed to be addressing men 
and God at the same time. His thanksgiv- 
ings had two goals. When he began to thank 
men he felt that he had to thank God; and 
when he began to thank God he felt that he 
had to thank men. In the case of the text 
he unites the two moods as if they belonged 
together; and he says quite simply, '^I thank 
my God upon every remembrance of you.'* 
Surely it would be strange to omit from 
our reasons for thanksgiving the mention of 
our human associations. We may well thank 
God for the lower gifts to life. Our bodies 
demand food. The harvest comes. We use f 
the gift of physical strength wherewith to 
claim the gift of food. The custom of \ 
Thanksgiving Day emphasizes this good of 



THE APOSTLE 163 

life. A dinner lias become one of its sym- 
bols. The charge is frequent that the table 
receives a surplus of emphasis on this holi- 
day as well as at other times. The cynic 
will tell us that the announcement of refresh- 
ments will increase the attendance even at 
a religious gathering. From this he draws 
the conclusion that the best people are still 
moved mainly by the animal appeal. We 
should be careful, however, lest we fall in 
with this charge too readily. The truth is 
that a table is the world's great medium of 
sociability. We become really known to each 
other in the breaking of bread. If it were 
to be announced that silence must reign at 
the banquet, that friend could not converse 
with friend either by speech or by signifi- 
cant look, and that the feast was to be purely 
physical, the average person would move 
slowly toward the dull occasion. Analyzing 
our own motives and observing the motives 
of others, we shall conclude that banquet ta- 
bles are valued chiefly because they give free- 



164: THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

dom to fellowship and make possible a fasci- 
nating closeness of social contact. Some of 
the most sacred utterances of our Lord were 
given as table-talks. It was even ' * after sup- 
per" that He took the bread and cup and in- 
stituted the perpetual Feast of His own re- 
membrance. The table of feasting and fel- 
lowship is not without a high sanction. The 
grateful and temperate use of the custom of 
this Thanksgiving Day can plead the exam- 
ple of the Holiest. 

But, more than this, the custom of the 
day becomes one of its symbols. Eeading 
that symbol, we may be brought to give 
thanks for the lives that are nearly related 
to our own. Too often we make relation- 
ships spell responsibility alone, whereas they 
spell joy also. Utter aloneness would be the 
deepest punishment. This is the tragedy of 
imprisonment for life. There is social dis- 
grace ; yet as the years pass those who know 
of the disgrace become fewer. The penalty 
lies in being cut off from associations, '*Sol- 



THE APOSTLE 165 

itary confinement'^ is one of the last menaces 
of the law. The world's turmoil is distant; 
privacy is complete ; food is eaten in silence ; 
ease is absolute ; responsibility for others 
ceases ! A pleasing prospect, this ! No voice 
of man can fall upon your ear ! No sight of 
human face can draw your attention! No 
printed page relates you to the world's strife 
and suffering! The walls are your only 
friends; they alone give answer to your 
words and make your tones fall back upon 
yourself in dismal rebound! You are shut 
up to your own society; you are your own 
only companion! Such a life has driven 
more than one man to madness. The experi- 
ment of such isolation would send us back to 
the eager renewal of our relationships; and 
we would consider the responsibility in- 
volved as a meager price to pay for the joy 
of comradeship. Poor, ignorant Friday is a 
wonderful gift when Eobinson Crusoe has 
lived alone for a time! 

But these illustrations do not show the 



166 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

full value of association. Beyond tlie prison 
walls is a world of people; and beyond the 
horizon that surrounds the desert island the 
ships plow the sea. Some day that frowning 
gate may open; some day the hidden ships 
may come in sight. Our minds and hearts 
still relate us to others. "We live by the hope 
of a possible reunion with our kind. Ed- 
ward Everett Hale wrote of ' ^ The Man with- 
out a Country. '^ He showed by a tragic 
process of elunination what it would mean 
to a human life to be fully cut off from its 
country. That convincing lesson in patri- 
otism deals with but one form of our human 
association. Think what it would be to be a 
man without a country, without a home, 
without a family, without a friend, without 
an association of any kind! Van Dyke car- 
ries this thought on until he conceives a man 
outside of all relations. He has no parents; 
for, if he had, he would be related to them. 
He is not a product of matter ; for, if he were, 
he would be related to matter. He has no 



THE APOSTLE 167 

place in the world; for, if he had, he would 
be related to that place. He is not held in 
the thought of God ; for, if he were, he would 
be related to God. He is simply a lonely 
fragment. He is a mere onlooker— nothing 
more. He sees a thousand persons, each fit- 
ting nicely into some relation to men and to 
work; but his only relation is the conscious- 
ness that the other people have relations, and 
that he himself is wholly superfluous, abso- 
lutely unnecessary to anybody's life. That 
would certainly be a frightful independence ! 
The imagining of a being who is worldless, 
placeless, countryless, parentless, friendless, 
Godless, needless, will make us all thank God 
that He has made us for association. Our 
temporary absence from our usual associa- 
tions sometimes brings this lesson to us. We 
learn it most keenly in the vast loneliness of 
a strange city. We behold the multitudes as 
they pass in the evening time, each one tak- 
ing his way to some fellowship. But no 
group invites us. Like Eiley's character, we 



168 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

begin to long for '^Griggsby's Station,'^ 
where almost every neighbor was ^^just like 
a relation." Rose Hawthorn Lathrop has 
pictured the need of our human associations 
under these poetic figures of speech: 

A log won't burn alone ! 

The flame grows less, the hearth is dark. 

Low sings the sap in crooning tone ; 

The room grows chill, and cold, and stark. 
One's heart holds back as if to hark 

For ghostly sobs and eerie moan,- — 

A log can't burn alone ! 

'a life can't glow alone ! 

The smile seems sad, the senses start. 
The will lies useless, limp, and prone ; 

Unchallenged and uncheered the heart ; 

And one by one the stars depart 
From all one's sky, to darkness grown, — 
A life is death, alone ! * * 

Even this most general description will make 
us feel that we must list our human associ- 
ations among our reasons for thanksgiving. 
But all this touches only the outer circle 
of life's company. There are still closer 



THE APOSTLE 169 

circles of fellowship. It would be difficult to 
estimate what our acquaintances mean to us. 
They are not yet in our nearer confidences. 
But they affect our lives as we pass them, 
giving us cheer and adding to our pleasure. 
They become parties to our success, whether 
commercial, political, or professional. If our 
association were confined to our intimates, 
life might become very narrow. We have 
all known persons who belonged to a clique 
rather than to a constituency. These limited 
their own cause of thankfulness. From 
the circle of acquaintances we gradually 
gather about us a nearer and smaller circle 
still. These we call our friends. The cynic, 
who is, as the etymology of the word would 
indicate, the snarling dog of social life, may 
say that our friends can be numbered by the 
fingers of one hand, or he may express doubt 
as to the reality of any friendship. But 
those who have had the outgo and the in- 
come of friendship will not join in the skep- 
ticism. The proof of friendship is the ex- 



iro THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

perience of friendship. If we know tliat 
there are those whom we would serve in all 
gladness and with no selfish motive, the evi- 
dence lives within ns. If we know, too, that 
there are those who pursue us with a loving 
interest, who are struck with sorrow when 
we are sorrowful, who are happier by rea- 
son of all our happiness, who for the decades 
of our absence cease not to place flowers upon 
our children's graves, the evidence reaches 
us from other hearts. When we think of 
such as these our minds can leave the fields 
and offices with their gifts of food or gold 
and can enter the room where heart meets 
heart and the higher commerce reigns. This 
will bring us to the place of St. Paul's thanks- 
giving, ^^I thank my God upon every remem- 
brance of you." 

This day has become the holiday of the 
home. The trains bear to-day hundreds of 
thousands who are returning to the inmost 
social circle. Around the board reminis- 
cences will be exchanged, fond news will be 



THE APOSTLE 171 

given in barter, and lives will return to the 
fountain of youth for their own refreshing. 
Two men stood on a street one dreadful even- 
ing when the wind was howling fiercely. As 
they bade each other a hasty *^ good-night'' 
one exclaimed, *^My God, what a terrible 
thing it would be to have no home to enter 
now!'' Even so! As a place of shelter the 
home means much; but as a place of sym- 
pathy and communion it means far more. 
Southey puts it justly in the words: 

''One small spot 
Where my tired feet may rest, and call it home. 
There is magic in that little word. 
It is a mystic circle that surrounds 
Comforts and virtues never known beyond 
The hallowed limit.** 

It is not the occasion for using the names 
of father and mother, brother and sister, 
wife and chUd, as appeals to mere emotion; 
but it is the occasion for lifting those names 
to the heights of praise. Take from us the 
recollections of home, and what fearful gaps 



172 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

are made in tlie list of joys ! Take from us 
to-day tlie refuge of home, and how vacant 
the world suddenly becomes! The home is 
of God's appointing. Those who can not 
read God's law in the constitution of so- 
ciety are blind. Is a law of less force when 
written in the flesh and blood, the love and 
hope, of human lives than when written on 
parchment or on stone ? God made the home, 
and He is still engaged in the long education 
of man for the purity and unselfishness of 
domestic life. To-day we shall look into the 
faces of loved ones and shall indulge in 
happy converse at the board of plenty. We 
shall think of other faces whose smile greeted 
us in days of old. If our hearts be just and 
if they have learned to appreciate the pre- 
ciousness of our closer relations, we shall 
gather the beloved, those present and those 
absent, into our thought, and we shall say 
with grateful fervor, *'I thank my God upon 
every remembrance of you." 

This has brought us through the thought 



THE APOSTLE 173 

that we should thank God for these human 
associations. But it has not yet made clear 
the propriety and justice of expressing our 
gratitude to our friends and loved ones. 
Paul, as we have observed, felt no sense of 
contradiction between the two goals of 
thanksgiving. He put God and men into one 
sentence of praise. The charge that we do 
not thank God often enough and fervently 
enough is doubtless true. It is likewise true 
that we do not thank men often enough and 
fervently enough. This holiday has its hu- 
man meaning. One of our papers has printed 
this verse: 

What silence we keep year after year 

With those who are most near to us and dear ! 

We live beside each other day by day. 

And speak of myriad things, but seldom say 

The fidl sweet word that lies just in our reach 

Beneath the conunonplace ojF common speech.*' 

The accusation is true, whatever we may 
think of the poetry. This holiday would en- 
ter upon a real service if it could be used to 
correct this carelessness. 



II 



174: THAKKSGIVIXG SEE^KJNS 

Tliere are some things that explain, if 
tliey do not excuse, our failure to look the 
companions of life in the face and tell them 
that we thank God upon every remembrance 
of their relation to us. Peter in his general 
Epistle said that governors are set for the 
punishment of evil, and also for ^Hhe praise 
of them that do well." Governors do not 
often enter upon the latter function of their 
office. The official pen and ink would not 
be equal to the task. There is a sense in 
which our failure to commend is a tribute 
to the faithfulness of our friends. Life is so 
crowded with small services, and these are 
rendered so faithfully, that it seems quite 
impossible to keep on hand a sufficient stock 
of commendatory language. The constancy 
of benefit works here even as it works in our 
relation of gratitude to God. Men do so 
much for us and mean so much to us that ade- 
quate and regular expression is out of the 
question. Is not Thanksgiving Day a good 
season for bringing up arrears, with men as 



THE APOSTLE 175 

with God? Comment is sometimes made on 
the fact that our set phrase of appreciation 
has been more and more abbreviated. In the 
old day it was, '*I thank you." Later, says 
the critic, our faster life presumed that the 
**I'' would be understood, and began to say, 
* * Thank you. ' ' Still later we discovered that 
two words required excessive time and en- 
ergy, and so we descended to the form, 
' ' Thanks. ' ' Our appreciation was left in the 
midair of speech as if it has no starting 
point and no goal! Perhaps our reform 
might begin by discarding the blunt and 
blank ritual and by returning to the simple 
dignity and fullness of expression, '*I thank 
you." 

We are hindered, too, by the fact that so 
much of life's service is remunerated by 
other coin than that of speech. The clerk 
has his wage ; so does the pastor ; so does the 
general; so does the President. Ere we are, 
done with this consideration the circle of 
human appreciation is decidedly narrowed. 



178 THA]srKSGr\n:Na seemons 

Every situation, however, has its moral and 
social bearing, and there are certain qualities 
that are never placed on ledgers or exhibited 
in the market. Arnold of Eugby had a sal- 
ary; why should his students be grateful to 
himf Lincoln had a salary; why should a 
nation praise his service? Directly we shall 
be reminded that the private soldiers of the 
great war were paid thirteen dollars per 
month, and that G-race Darling's father re- 
ceived regular pay as a lighthouse-keeper 
on one of the Fame Islands ! Such illustra- 
tions will show us that there is a social and 
moral side to service, for which no finan- 
cial recognition alone is sufficient. A son's 
debt to his parents is never fully met when 
he has given them as much as they spent 
for his care and education, and has added 
thereto a fair estimate of the value of their 
time ! The spiritual quality in service is like 
the grace of God; it is without money and 
without the cruder price. Yet are there 
deeper forms of appreciation in which our 



THE APOSTLE 177 

debts can be partially paid to faithful 
hearts. 

The fact that God desires our thanksgiv- 
ings has its lesson for a human duty. The 
nature of God demands praise. Construe 
this fact as one will, it is significant. How 
often men say, ' ' Praise the Lord ! ' ' We are 
prone to take the word as meaning some- 
thing different from its ordinary signifi- 
cance. But the central fact abides: God 
craves praise. He is a Great Heart, and He 
is pleased by our appreciations. The psalm- 
ist says, **Thou art great and greatly to be 
praised." God Himself is represented as 
saying, ** Whoso offereth praise glorifieth 
Me." God needs praise because He is not 
some frozen abstraction unmoved by the 
warm approaches of His own. This Thanks- 
giving Day must mean that God is not indif- 
ferent to the response which we make to His 
benefits. Here we come straight upon our 
duty to men. Are they not made in His 
image? Are they not like God in this re- 

12 



178 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

spect: that they appreciate commendation 
and gratitnde! The desire of men for the 
appreciation of their fellows is not a human 
"weakness. It is a part of their divine like- 
ness. If one should say truly that he did 
not wish that others should appreciate his 
character and his work, that one would show 
that he was in so far unlike God. The per- 
fect Man said, sadly, *^Were there not ten 
cleansed, but where are the nine?" The 
meaning of this day comes down to earth, 
enters offices and stores, takes up its abode 
in homes, and does not do its perfect work 
until hosts have joined the apostle in this 
word of social thanksgiving, ^^I thank my 
God upon every remembrance of you." 

Our relations with God being mutual, this 
truth carries us in another good direction. 
God desires praise; God gives praise. We 
are like Him in our longing for appreciation ; 
and we should seek to be like Him in our wil- 
lingness to give appreciation. God is not a 
monarch, forever feasting upon the adora- 



THE APOSTLE 179 

tion of His subjects. He receives, and He 
gives. He believes in the reciprocity of 
praise. Nor is He hindered by any of our 
superficial reasons for withholding appreci- 
ation. He gives His silent proclamation to 
each well-doer. "Where faithfulness comes 
into our service, He gives the inner appreci- 
ation even though the outer wage be paid. 
He never seems to be afraid of making us 
vain; for always there comes to the honest 
worker the whisper of approval. We may 
halt at saying that God is ever giving thanks 
to men ; yet a truth lies hidden in this clumsy 
expression. If we are not like Him unless 
we wish for just appreciation, it is equally 
true that we are not like Him unless we give 
just appreciation. He does not withhold 
His eulogies until men are dead; rather He 
scatters them all along the faithful days. 
After every honest task the still small voice 
says, ^'Well done!" Far out at the end of 
life He has erected a judgment seat. The 
prize that draws us onward and that will 



180 THANKSaiVINa SEEMONS 

satisfy all our hopes is that our lives may 
be crowned by the divine appreciation and 
that the fixed and final verdict will be His 
'^Well done!'' 

St. Paul's gratitude was only deeper be- 
cause those for whom he thanked God repre- 
sented his own love and service. These Phi- 
lippians had been led by him into the way of 
Christ. They were his reward, his joy, his 
glory. They were not gifts thrust upon him ; 
they were gifts won by the grace of Christ. 
They were the returns on his own invest- 
ments. Even as the husbandman works with 
God that he may gain the gift of the har- 
vest, so had the apostle worked with God 
that he might have this fellowship in the 
gospel. His thanksgiving often takes this 
turn. He wrote to Timothy: ^'I thank God, 
whom I serve from my forefathers with a 
pure conscience, that without ceasing I have 
remembrance of thee in my prayers night 
and day." A strange reason for thanksgiv- 
ing ! we are ready to say. He thanks the God 



THE APOSTLE 181 

whom lie serves that lie himself serves an- 
other by intercessory prayer. Usually we 
thank the God that serves ns for the man 
that serves ns. But St. Paul turns gratitude 
right about face. He thanks the God that is 
served for the man that is served. In our 
better times we know the meaning of all this. 
If to-day we could see some man whom we 
had rescued from evil ways, and could be- 
hold him walking the way of righteousness 
and peace, we could thank God most fer- 
vently. Could we bring yet others into the 
company until those whom we had helped be- 
came a throng, then thanksgivings would 
crowd upon thanksgivings. We could look 
upon those whom we had brought into the 
better life and we could say most truly, ^*I 
thank my God upon every remembrance of 
you." 

Henry Van Dyke has a poem which rep- 
resents the death of a man who had had 
beautiful dreams and high thoughts which 
no actual life could match. But he had post- 



182. THANKSanrENG SERMONS 

poned Ms good deeds, and now the end was 
pressing upon him. He recounted the things 
that he had not done, but that he would do 
if only he could have another chance: 

I *11 say the loyal, helpful things that make life 

sweet and fair, 
I '11 pay the gratitude I owe for human love and care. 
Perhaps I 've been at fault sometimes — I '11 ask to 

be forgiven. 
And make this very room of mine seem like a little 

heaven. 

For one by one I '11 call my friends to stand beside 

my bed ; 
I '11 speak the true and tender words that I have left 

unsaid ; 
And every heart shall throb and glow, all coldness 

melt away 
Around my altar-fire of love — ^ah, give me but one 

day!" * 

This Thanksgiving Day God gives for such 
a human purpose. He will be pleased if we 
shall take the meaning of the holiday and 
apply it to His children— to those who are 

*" The ToiUng of Felix and Other Poems," Van Dyke, p. 61. 



>. 



THE APOSTLE 183 

so much like Himself that life has more joy 
when they receive appreciation. Their joy 
will be richer if we can tell them that they 
are the Lord's gifts to us and can repeat to 
them this apostolic word, '*I thank my God 
upon every remembrance of you." 



THANKSGIVING FOR INNER 
STRENGTH 

Text: *^For this thing I besought the Lord 
thrice that it might depart from me. And 
Eg said unto me, My grace is sufficient 
for thee,"— 2 Cok. xii, 8-9a. 

This is the holiday which calls us to re- 
count God's benefits. Our tendency is to 
put the stress upon certain outer events or 
gifts. Even though we recognize the pri- 
macy of the spirit, the body makes its clam- 
orous demands. Its needs are of the open 
and dramatic sort, so much so that it is ever 
easier to make appeal in their behalf. San 
Francisco and Messina do not wait long for 
supplies for the body; nor do those stricken 
by earthquake, fire, and tidal wave fail to 
respond with earnest gratitude. But sup- 

184 



THE APOSTLE 185 

plies for the higher life come more slowly. 
In spite of our lofty intent we must often 
confess ourselves guilty of materialism. 
This is not so much because our theory of 
life is astray as because the needs of the 
spirit lie more or less hidden. It is not 
so easy for many men to see the reality of 
the hunger and thirst after righteousness as 
it is for them to see the reality of bodily 
want. 

This type of blindness as to life's deeper 
needs naturally shows itself in relation to 
life's deeper gifts. The fact that this 
Thanksgiving Day comes at the close of the 
harvest season should not, of course, lead us 
to assume that jimericans care more for the 
fruits of the earth than they do for the fruits 
of the spirit. Any such sweeping indictment 
needs to be guarded. Yet perhaps a per- 
sonal review of your feelings, as you have 
approached this holiday, might not be spir- 
itually flattering. Upon what gifts have you 
put the emphasis ? Do you thank God at the 



186 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

table oftener than you thank Him at some 
spiritual altar? Have your thoughts thus 
far this day dealt mostly with gifts that are 
imparted directly to the soul? These are 
questions that probe to the center. They 
give us this day's revelation of ourselves. 
St. Paul suggests a direction in which we 
may look for a deeper form of gratitude. 
The thought is an old one ; but it has special 
significance for the Thanksgiving season. 
Had the apostle confined his search to his 
body, reasons for gratitude would have been 
offset. He would have remembered pains 
that racked and limitations that fretted. He 
might have recalled hours in which he agon- 
ized. But St. Paul had a peculiar way of 
fleeing to a spiritual refuge. He did just 
that in this instance. Finding disorder in 
his body, he moved up into his own soul. 
There he found the grace of God. So did 
he come to ascribe glory and give thanks. 
Let us note the splendid reality of the apos- 
tle's gratitude. 



THE APOSTLE 187 

Were it not for tlie fact that we are all 
moved by a greater or less element of curi- 
osity, it would be easy for ns to smile as 
we see others prying into insignificant ques- 
tions. St. Paul had a way of keeping things 
to himself. He passed through a spiritual 
experience, concerning which he said nothing 
for fourteen years; and he passed through 
a physical experience, about which he never 
gave any details. His splendid reticence 
seems to have piqued commentators and 
Bible readers into an eager curiousness ; and 
much time and effort have been spent in la- 
bored attempts Ito gain Paul's secret and to 
find out what ''the thorn in the flesh" was. 
The many theories advanced are in them- 
selves evidences that the inquiry is vain. 
No one knows what Paul's affliction was. 
Some have said that it was a deformity of 
personal appearance ! Others have held that 
it was a case of weak eyes, aggravated and 
made chronic by the blinding light that shone 
above the Damascus road! Others, again, 



188 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

have supposed that it was an impediment in 
his speech which greatly hindered his public 
work! Yet others have held that it was a 
tendency to epilepsy which kept the busy 
apostle in constant fear! And still others 
have held that the energetic missionary was 
subject to nervous prostration— in which 
case he would surely have many modern sym- 
pathizers ! 

This list by no means exhausts the sup- 
positions that have been brought forward. 
Any one of them may be true; or they may 
all be false. Our ignorance gives us the wide 
advantage of general comfort to all sufferers 
rather than the narrow advantage of special 
comfort to a class of sufferers. With the 
record as it stands, we are not likely to lose 
our thought upon one kind of affliction. This 
much, then, and only this much, do we know : 
Paul was compelled to endure a grievous 
and bitter weakness. It weighed heavily 
upon his heart and impeded his work. He 
prayed with earnestness that this 'Hhorn in 



THE APOSTLE 189 

the flesli" which kept pricking and torment- 
ing him might be removed. A second and a 
third time he offered the same petition. But 
the wearing pain did not cease. The thorn 
did not depart; nor did it lose its sharpness 
and its sting. Yet it would be farthest from 
the truth to say that Paul's prayers were dis- 
regarded. Nor would it be correct to affirm 
that he received only a reflex benefit from 
his petitions. Paul's prayers were heard; 
Paul's prayers were answered. Instead of 
paying heed to the plea by removing the 
thing, God paid heed to it by renewing the 
man. Instead of changing Paul's thorn, God 
changed Paul's spirit. You will at once see 
how suggestive this is. Paul had said: *^0 
Lord, let this buffeting thorn in my flesh de- 
part. It worries me. It interferes with my 
happiness. It hinders my work. I beseech 
Thee, remove it.'' But the divine answer 
was: **No! The thorn shall remain. But 
you yourself shall be strengthened. I will 
pour My help in upon your life, and I will 



190 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

make you strong enongli to endure your 
hardships." This was the answer; and how 
divine it was, and how glorious the effect 
upon the life, we will all do well to observe 
and appreciate. The time came when the 
apostle thanked God for the deeper gift of 
grace and for his power of spiritual resist- 
ance. 

The divine method adopted in St. Paul's 
case is still used. More doubtless than we 
are in the habit of thinking. God is answer- 
ing our prayers, and so calling for our grati- 
tude, not by removing our difficulties, but 
by making us equal to them. This idea must 
be many times forced upon us all. It must 
often come to us in connection with our own 
circle of friends. Our minds go up and down 
the streets and stop at various houses. We 
find that there are not many, perhaps indeed 
none, in which there is full freedom from 
some serious affliction. To be sure, the joys 
are in the larger portion, and our prayers 
would be more appropriately charged with 



THE APOSTLE 191 

gratitude than with petition. But, after all, 
the most of the homes bear a difficulty, a 
trial, a sickness from which they would 
gladly be delivered. 

In most of these cases our friends have 
prayed that the trying thing might be re- 
moved. Once, twice, thrice, yea, many, many 
times they have said: '^0 God, lift this 
weight. Eemove this burden. Cure this 
sickness. Drive away this trial." But the 
weight, the burden, the sickness, the trial, 
have not departed ; it may be that they have 
increased in heaviness and bitterness. But 
applying the matter to you, who are in this 
Thanksgiving service, it may be justly said 
that you have been patient and courageous. 
In your patience and courage may be seen 
God's answer to your prayers, and your own 
reason for gratitude. For this thing you 
have prayed the Lord that it might depart 
from you. But He has said, '^Mj grace is 
sufficient." This is not simply a Pauline 
experience; it is a Christian experience. It 



192 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

is as frequent and effective in this year as 
it was in the year 60, 

Yet for all this it is tme that our super- 
ficial thought and desire are apt to prefer 
the method of removal. Sometimes this 
method seems so much the simpler, and the 
solution so much the easier. Why not have 
the thorn out and be done with it? "Why 
endure the fret and torment through the 
months or years? The answer, in most gen- 
eral terms, is that while we are prone to put 
emphasis upon happiness, God puts the em- 
phasis upon character. Undoubtedly the 
ideal of many men would be a world from 
which all evil and difficulty would be ban- 
ished. But the ideal of God is a world in 
which men will be able to resist evil and dif- 
ficulty. We put the stress upon things; God 
puts it upon men. Paul's desire is to have 
the thorn subtracted; God's desire is to have 
the manhood added. These contrasts state 
the two methods and give us fully the thought 
of the apostle's language and experience. 



THE APOSTLE 193 

Our poor dreams, however, are very per- 
sistent. We all have our thoughts of a per- 
fect world. Such perfection is quite likely 
to consist of a full freedom from grave diffi- 
culties. As it is now, matters often seem to 
be strangely out of harmony. The coal that 
we need for heat is buried beneath the moun- 
tains, and we must work in darkness and 
damp in order to release the black servant 
from its prison. The soil that men need 
for the production of food is pre-empted by 
vigorous weeds and so mingled with rocks, 
stones, and roots that we must ever with 
plow, hoe, and rake fight against its stub- 
bornness. The lumber that we need for the 
making of our houses resists with its tough- 
ness man's attempts to use it, and submits 
only when men compel it into service. Even 
the gracious rivers hinder man's progress, 
and he must labor hard to make a bridge; 
for natural bridges are few. 

Seeing that there is need of such great 
labor, it is scarcely astonishing that we 
13 



194 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

should be struck with surprise. "Why is not 
the needed coal more accessible? "Why is 
not the soil more tractable? Why is not the 
lumber more manageable? Why do not 
bridges made by the divine hand span every 
hindering river? Why all the strange diffi- 
culties? But think a moment! Are we not 
laying all the stress upon things— accessible 
coal, tractable soil, pliable lumber, ready- 
made bridges? We can conceive that some 
dreaming enthusiast should pray: *^0 Lord, 
remove these hindrances. They impede our 
work. Give us an easier chance. Then shall 
we be truly grateful. ' ' But we all feel fairly 
certain that the prayer would be unavailing 
as to its direct purpose. God would answer : 
'^My grace is sufficient for thee. You want 
a continent without a desert, a stone, or a 
weed. I want men with industry, with re- 
sources, with inventive power. I want ac- 
cessible men, tractable men, pliable men, nat- 
ural men.'^ 

It is thus evident that the methods of God 



THE APOSTLE 195 

are not in harmony with our superficial 
thought of things. And there is, at any rate, 
just enough of difference in the conditions of 
men to give us a vital proof as to the ef- 
fectiveness of the divine plan. Everywhere 
men must enter into something of a struggle 
with unwilling nature. But this struggle 
varies in its intensity. Where the climate 
is severe, without being fierce and overpow- 
ering, there do we find the most capable 
races. It is easier, and in a sense pleasanter, 
to live in the tropics than it is to live in the 
temperate zones. To dwell where man needs 
no house barricaded against the biting winds, 
and where perennially the earth blossoms 
with flowers and the trees hang with luscious 
fruits, would seem a delight. But the fixed 
fact of history is that the stronger men do 
not come from the softer climates. They 
rather come out of the middle north, where 
the breezes are sharp and man becomes 
hardy and strong through his continuous 
struggle. The Quaker poet touches beauti- 



196 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

fully on this idea in Ms lines, ''For an 
Autumn Festival:" 

God gives us with our rugged soil 
The power to make it Eden-fair, 

And richer fruits to crown our toil 
Than summer wedded islands bear. 

Who murmurs at his lot to-day ? 

Who scorns his native flower and bloom? 
Or sighs for dainties far away, 

Beside the bounteous board at home ? 

Thank Heaven, instead, that Freedom's arm 
Change a rocky soil to gold, — 

That brave and generous lives can warm 
A clime with Northern ices cold. 

And let these altars, wreathed with flowers 
And piled with fruits, awake again 

Thanksgivings for the golden hours. 
The early and the latter rain." * 

So if the children of the tropics can thank 
God for a life of balm, the children of the 
North can thank Him for a vast compen- 
sation. 

* Household Edition, p. 2G0. 



THE APOSTLE 197 

May not all this be taken as showing 
forth the wisdom of God's plan and the jus- 
tice of our gratitude? He does not deliver 
men from difficulties ; He strengthens men to 
meet difficulties. His method is not that of 
deliverance, but that of strength. In this 
respect we often follow God's way. What 
makes the sailor? Is it the easy process of 
lying on the deck and feeling the pleasant 
winds of the sea as they play about his face I 
Is it freedom from storm and darkness? 
Nay, rather it is climbing aloft amid the rig- 
ging when the ocean is mad, when winds 
blow, when the ship heaves with the billows, 
and the great masts creak and groan ! This 
makes the sailor— not the absence of diffi- 
culties, but the conquest of difficulties. Our 
mistaken plea might be for a life without 
a hindrance or a difficulty; God's plea is for 
a man with fortitude and perseverance. In 
our better times we come to adopt and to 
honor the divine way. 

We must all have wondered, too, at the 



198 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

decision and persistence that are necessary 
in order that man may come to any conquest 
in knowledge. We must spend about one- 
third of life in study before we are highly 
educated. Ten years are spent in primary 
and grammar school, four years in prepara- 
tory school, four in college, and three or four 
in the professional school. Ere we know it, 
one-third or more of our life is gone. It is 
scarcely to be wondered that young persons 
grow discouraged at the long outlook and 
that the most of them drop their studies at 
an early age. "We have all wished that there 
was a royal road to geometry ; that the limbs 
of the tree of knowledge did not grow so 
high ; that we might, at any rate, be relieved 
of the mental struggles and difficulties that 
lie in the way to an exact education. We 
might imagine some man with a genuine 
thirst for knowledge offering this prayer: 
*^0 God, my poor mind must crawl toward 
knowledge. The effort is long and hard. 
Deliver me from these tiying efforts. Work 



THE APOSTLE 199 

within me a mental miracle. By a quick 
revelation equip me for life's work and pour 
something of Thine infinite truth into my 
mind." Sure we are that to a man of this 
spirit God would give no answer according 
to the man's request. For this thing the 
man might pray the Lord that his ignorance 
should depart from him. But the Lord 
would say, ^ ' My grace is sufficient for thee. ' ' 
And more than one young man who trembled 
at the thought of intellectual toil has found 
himself not made sufficient without it, but 
made sufficient for it, and has come out to 
active life altogether stronger, more self- 
reliant, and far more self-respecting than he 
would have been if the difficulties had been 
removed rather than the strength imparted 
and accepted. Our dawdling desire might 
call for a made-to-order brain, crammed with 
knowledge all labeled and ready for use. 
But God's method calls for a man, with men- 
tal purpose, with plodding mind, with solid 
thoughts whose getting has required man- 



200 THANKSGIVINa SEEMONS 

hood, and whose getting has also made more 
manhood. If God has given ns grace to work 
in this spirit, we have abundant reason for 
gratitude. 

Plainly now, it is true enough that in our 
moral lives God will not forsake His usual 
methods. It may be that some of us would 
ask for a heart without doubts, with auto- 
matic morality, with machine-like holiness. 
But God does not have it so. He would have 
men with doubts, with moral struggles, with 
intense strivings after holiness. Mr. Huxley, 
as quoted by Mr. Drummond, says, ^*I pro- 
test that if some great Power would agree 
to make me always think what is true and 
do what is right, on condition of being turned 
into a sort of clock and wound up every 
morning, I should instantly close with the 
offer." These words may show a great 
moral desire, but they certainly do not show 
any great moral heroism. Our own stand- 
ards of admiration will convince us of their 
weakness. 



THE APOSTLE 201 

Here are two men. One of tliem is slow, 
phlegmatic, quiet, passionless. By very na- 
ture he takes things easy. You may admire 
him and speak well of his constancy and of 
his easy morality. But here is another man, 
who is quick, active, full of passion. He 
often wishes that he were not so. It may be 
that he has sometimes prayed that these 
moral thorns might depart. He has looked 
upon the life of his quiet brother and has 
almost envied his apparently natural good- 
ness. If it be that we find this second man 
true, holding a controlling hand over his 
quick and passionate nature, he is more 
worthy of admiration, yea, and more repre- 
sentative of divine helpfulness, than is the 
first man. We protest, therefore, that if 
some great Power were to offer an immedi- 
ate and clock-like goodness, we would in- 
stantly reject the offer. We can well thank 
God for the privilege of earnest co-operation 
with Him, by the grace of Christ and under 
the leadership of His Spirit, in working out 
our characters. 



202 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

It may be that we have wished that we 
might have freedom from the irksome duties 
of the every-day. Perhaps none of us have 
been bold enough to come to God and ask 
Him that our hard tasks might depart; for 
we have felt that such a petition would be 
ignoble. We can readily imagine that there 
would be something charming and delight- 
ful in full deliverance from certain vexing 
labors. But there is a greater thing than 
this full deliverance. Is it not greater and 
better to hear God say: *^I can not send away 
your duties. But I will help you to be true 
to them. My grace is sufficient." If we have 
gone to our work and have put patient hands 
upon it for the day, the month, the year, be- 
ing faithful to every trust, and loyal to every 
demand, surely there is with us a peace of 
heart that is the essence of gratitude. 

This special aspect of Thanksgiving Day 
gains emphasis from a knowledge of its be- 
ginning. When, after the first harvest gath- 
ered by the New England colonists in 1621, 



THE APOSTLE 203 

Governor Bradford made provision for a 
day of praise, his word came to men and 
women who had known hardship. Their 
loved ones had been stricken with disease; 
their numbers had been decreased by death ; 
their efforts had been stubbornly resisted 
by the rocky soil and the bleak winds of the 
Atlantic Coast ; their safety had been threat- 
ened by the Indians ; in short, their year had 
been one of unspeakable struggle. Yet they 
set for us the precedent of faith. "We have 
no record of their first thanksgiving prayer; 
but we know that it might properly have in- 
cluded mighty praises for the divine grace 
that had made them sufficient for their toils 
and privations. If God had not made them 
miraculous gardens, He had given them pa- 
tient and skillful hands. If He had not 
stilled the tempests of winter, He had given 
them strength to build their homes. If He 
had not kept disease away from their settle- 
ment, He had granted the trust that unmur- 
muringly surrenders the beloved to His holy 



204 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

keeping. If He had not tempered the spirits 
of the savages, He had strengthened the 
spirits of the Puritans. If those who kept 
that first Thanksgiving had prayed that the 
thorns should depart, God had given the 
deeper answer. Instead of working without 
merely, He had worked within. In our day 
it is easy to see that the largest reason of 
thanksgiving was in the spirits of the people 
to whom God had said amid all their tribula- 
tions, "Mj grace is sufficient.'' 

Nor ought this sermon to close without 
some reference to the harsh and exceptional 
things that have come as sharp thorns into 
your lives. Since last Thanksgiving many 
of you have known sorrows— sorrows deep 
and poignant. Had some one told you a year 
ago of their coming you would not have be- 
lieved that you could endure them. Yet you 
are in this service to-day; and your heart, 
while questioning, is not bitter or rebellious. 
You thus carry within you the divine answer 
to your prayer and your own reason for 



THE APOSTLE 205 

gratitude. The good God has not freed you 
from the hard thing; but He has said, ^^My 
grace is sufficient." 

The truth is that God has vast reserves 
of grace, even as He has given us vast re- 
serves of receptivity and so vast reserves of 
endurance. In a physical crisis we are often 
amazed at our own strength. The impos- 
sible of ordinary times is the possible of ex- 
traordinary times. The power must have 
been ever at command, only hidden and wait- 
ing for the occasion that should call it forth. 
Men, too, are often surprised at the power 
which their minds will show at some critical 
moment. Thoughts seem to catch fire, argu- 
ment fastens itself to argument, and the 
crisis makes us strangely alert. If this oc- 
curs in spite of singular difficulties, the tri- 
umph is only the sweeter. In the end we re- 
joice more because of the work brought to 
success over obstacles than we rejoice over 
the work that moved smoothly to its comple- 
tion. When we are made equal to the heavy 



206 TKAXKSamxa SEEMOXS 

and difficult t-asks, our exnltation is the 
greater. Onr gratitude should be likewise 
greater. 

It is even thus with the spiritual. The 
trustful man will find that God has endowed 
Ms nature with an immense fund of spiritual 
reserve-power. That reserve-power mani- 
fests itself quite as truly in the enduring of 
sorrow as in the doing of work. TTe never 
know what we can stand until the necessity 
is full upon us ; then G-od makes us equal to 
the terrible day. To go bravely through 
with the trial often means more than it would 
have meant to have missed it altogether. It 
is a great thing if we can escape the dark 
den, or if the lions are struck dead in answer 
to onr cry. It is a greater thing to go in 
among the roaiing beasts and to come forth 
unharmed. It is a large thing to escape the 
mouth of the fiery furnace; it is a gi'eater 
thing to walk amid the flames with the ^'form 
of the Fourth" beside us, and to come out 
at length without the smell of fii'e upon our 
garments. 



THE APOSTLE 207 

This word applies in a measure to you all. 
You have this year seen some dark disaster 
threatening your life— and you have prayed 
for deliverance. It may be that the deliver- 
ance came. Perhaps it did not. It was sick- 
ness that you feared. You said, *^0 God, 
spare me this suffering." In spite of your 
prayer the sickness came. The Lord said, 
''My grace is sufficient for thee." It was 
the greater test of divine helpfulness that 
you should through weeks of pain have been 
kept patient, steadfast, unmurmuring. It was 
poverty that you feared. You said, ' ' God, 
spare me this vexation and worry." God 
said, ''My grace is sufficient for thee." It 
was the greater proof of divine aid that you 
were able to pass without distrustful com- 
plaint from the place of plenty to the place 
of want. It may be that it was something 
more dreaded than sickness or poverty that 
seemed to approach— even the touch of death 
laid upon your beloved. Out of the depths 
you cried: "0 God, spare me this loss. Pity 



208 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS 

me!" God may have answered simply and 
tenderly, '^My grace is sufficient for thee." 
His grace in such a sorrow is a token of sym- 
pathy as well as a fact of help. For all this 
you may bring praise to God on this Thanks- 
giving Day. The minor note in your grati- 
tude need not rob your mood of reality. The 
power to endure, to resist, to hold steady, is 
a part of the power of life. The God who 
gives it is worthy of our worship and love. 
Even at the peril of seeming to move in 
a circle of speech and thought, there is a 
sense in which we may be thankful for thank- 
fulness. In these pews to-day are gathered 
friends who have walked this year over stony 
paths. The fact that you are here as gen- 
uine participants in this service tells of an 
inner victory. Your hearts have kept their 
faith. Driven to the deeper courts of life, 
you have found sure witnesses of the divine 
goodness. You may be grateful for your 
own gratitude. Here now with your loved 
ones and neighbors you reverently look to 



THE APOSTLE 209 

God and give Him praise for the mercies 
of the year that outwardly has seemed so 
barren and unblessed. It is easy enough for 
the prosperous to utter the common-place of 
good cheer, easy enough to mention the spir- 
itual compensations to our afflicted friends. 
Yet we all know the deeper truth of this 
Pauline experience. The greater heart is 
the register of its own triumphs ; it is its own 
proof of the divine care and aid. The 
brutish man may not understand; but the 
children of God know the lesson. They to 
whose troubled and broken hearts God's 
voice has spoken, saying, '^Mj grace is suffi- 
cient,'' may join with us fervently in the 
keeping of this great Feast of Praise. 



14 



THANKSGIVING FOR SERVICE 

Text; ''I thank Him that enabled me, even 
Christ Jesus our Lord, for that He 
counted me faithful, appointing me to His 
service.''—! Tim. i, 12 (R. V.). 

AVe now stand amid the annual festival of 
the harvest and the home. The theme of 
gratitude is to be chief in our thought. It 
may then be well for us to get hold of some 
ideas that will lift and regulate our think- 
ing, making it really high and spiritual. 

We pause, therefore, before this text and 
take it as our teacher. It gives us the terms 
of gratitude. Its first words are, ^^I thank,'' 
Gratitude must come down at last to the per- 
sonal unit. Strictly speaking, there can be 
no such thing as a national Thanksgiving; 

210 



THE APOSTLE 211 

for there can be no real nation except that 
which is made up of human hearts. Alice in 
Wonderland came upon the problem as to 
whether there could be a smile apart from 
a face. Of course there could not be; for 
smiles do not hang in the air. So there can 
not be thankfulness apart from a personal 
soul. If we have a day worthy to be called 
a national Thanksgiving, it will be only be- 
cause individual men among our people unite 
in one spirit, each man saying *^I thank. '^ 

The day must not only come down to a 
personal unit, it must go up at last to a per- 
sonal end. The first three words of the text 
are, '^I thank Him." We have here the two 
parties to the transactions of gratitude— the 
human and the divine. Thanksgiving is 
never meaningful and complete till there is 
just one man and just one God— the one 
human heart answering with gratitude to the 
benefits of the one Divine Heart and saying, 
^^I thank Him." 

This gives us the terms of thankfulness. 



212 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

but it does not give us its grades. A man 
may truly say, *^I thank Him," and still keep 
his gratitude on the earthly plane. It is in- 
deed significant that from the beginning our 
formal Thanksgiving Day has been ap- 
pointed for just after the harvest. The sea- 
son is eminently appropriate; but it should 
not be allowed to hold our gratitude down to 
the ground. There is a grade of gratitude 
that creeps on the soil ; there is also a grade 
of gratitude that soars in the sky. 

This text is valuable because it repre- 
sents a higher form of thanksgiving. Its 
phrases are all spiritual. Does Paul write, 
^^I thank Him for food, for clothing, for 
shelter!" No! There are no material terms 
in the passage. In these words the apostle 
is found to be absent from the body; he has 
reached the spirit world. Does he write: ^^I 
thank Him for friends, for kindly associa- 
tions, for the homes where I, an itinerant, 
have been entertained!" No! In other 
parts of his writings Paul emphasizes these 



THE APOSTLE 213 

things. In tlie Epistle to tlie Philippians he 
thanks God for their care for his bodily well- 
being; and in the Epistle to Philemon he 
thanks God for his friends. He was too real 
a man and had too real hmnan needs to make 
light of any of God's good gifts. The height 
of Paul's gratitude did not destroy its 
breadth. He was grateful for material bless- 
ings, grateful for social joys. But in this 
particular passage he goes beyond these re- 
gions. He rises above the lowlands— fresh 
and beautiful as they are; above the hill- 
crests— bright and serene as they are; and 
he comes to the mountain heights, where the 
breezes blow free and the rays of the sun 
shine first and last. 

It is ever our tendency to hold our peti- 
tions down. We forget so easily that the 
deeper blessings can be conferred only on 
the spirit. The prayer, *^Give us this day 
our daily bread," seems more definite and 
real to us than its companion, '^ Hallowed be 
Thy name." We are more prone to say, 



214 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

*'0 God, give me health," than we are to 
say, '*0 God, give me a pure heart." James 
Eussell Lowell tells how he had once seen 
a goat kneeling down on its foreknees in 
order that it might eat grass with less diffi- 
culty. Is there a spiritual parable in this? 
The action of the animal seemed to Mr. 
Lowell to suggest the common notion of 
prayer. He writes: *^ Most people are ready 
enough to go down on their knees for ma- 
terial blessings, but how few for those spir- 
itual gifts which alone are the answers to 
our orisons if we but knew it." 

And if we are apt to be material in our 
petitions we are by the same token apt to be 
material in our thanksgivings. It is also our 
tendency to hold our thankfulness down. 
Thanksgiving Day is the day of gratitude 
for the harvest and the home. This is all 
good; it is even Scriptural. But it does not 
include necessarily the elements of this sug- 
gestive text. We may well wonder whether 
there is not such a thing as purely animal 



THE APOSTLE 215 

gratitude— whether the satisfied grunt of the 
swine in trough and pen is not nearly equiv- 
alent to much of our thanksgiving. We are 
only too likely to miss the spiritual side. Is ^J 
it right that the sons of that God who is a 
Spirit should not go up into the spiritual 
life to seek causes for gratefulness ? If man 
is a spirit but has a body, is he to allow 
the gratitude for the things which minister 
to what he has to surpass in volume and 
fervor the gratitude for the things which 
minister to what he is? Is there not need 
of care here in order that gratitude may be, 
not the expression of refined selfishness, but 
rather the sign and spur of holy character 
and holy service? 

Thus Paul lifts thankfulness into the up- 
per realms. He refuses to remain in the 
field or even in the home. He goes to the 
temple with its supreme lesson for the soul, 
and there he writes his word appropriate to 
the sacred place, *^I thank Him that enabled 
me, even Christ Jesus the Lord, for that He 



216 THANKSGIVINa SERMONS 

counted me faithful, appointing me to His 
service.'' This is the proclamation to the 
republic of Christian souls? It is a call to 
the highest thanksgiving! 

What are the special characteristics of 
this finer grade of thankfulness as seen in 
the text? There is, first, gratitude for per- 
sonal power: *^I thank Him that enabled 
me." There is also gratitude for personal 
character: **I thank Him that enabled me, 
even Christ Jesus our Lord, for that Ee 
counted me faithful/' There is especially 
gratitude for personal opportunity: ^'I thank 
Him that enabled me, even Christ Jesus our 
Lord, for that He counted me faithful, ap- 
pointing me to His service," All these are 
the terms of the spirit. The large figures 
of the market place and the healthful beat- 
ing of the pulse are absent. Instead of men- 
tioning only what one has received, it recalls 
what one has been enabled to be and to do. 
It is thus a thanksgiving that grows up out of 
benevolence rather than out of selfishness. 



THE APOSTLE 217 

This opens the gate of gratitude to all 
good men. It may appear to some of you that 
in the lower ranges of life you find little for 
which you can be grateful. Business has not 
been successful. Its burdens and problems 
have grown heavier and larger throughout 
the year. Your bodily health has not been 
good. Nerves have been shaken and racked. 
You have wondered how much longer you 
would have strength to carry your load. All 
this has led to mental worry. Your mind has 
been haunted by specters. It may thus be 
that you have approached this holiday feel- 
ing that you have small cause for thankful- 
ness. But this text opens the door for you. 
It contains no reference to bodily health or 
to business prosperity; and yet it is a paean 
of gratitude. 

The secret is this: The apostle looks up 
into the highest places of life. He could not 
be grateful for commercial prosperity. 
There were times when his friends minis- 
tered to his material necessities. He could 



218 THANKSaiVINa SERMONS 

not be grateful for bodily health. All his 
life long he carried his thorn in the flesh 
which pricked him with unceasing pain. He 
found his cause for gratitude in higher 
things. So may it be with us. It is said that 
sometimes vessels lie in the ocean utterly be- 
calmed. The waters are dead and unruffled. 
The discouraged voyagers stand upon the 
deck and long for the harbor. They look at 
the surface of the sea; they find no move- 
ment that calls for gratitude; the ocean ag- 
gravates them with its quietness. But at 
last they look up; they see the wee pennant 
at the head of the mast as it begins to flut- 
ter. The breeze is aloft. It fills the upper 
sails. Then straight over that dead level of 
waters they move away under the power of 
a higher breeze. 

Do any of us as we approach the festival 
of Thanksgiving have the feeling expressed 
in Longfellow's '^Becalmed:'' 

** Becalmed upon the sea of Thought, 
Still unattained the land it sought, 



THE APOSTLE 219 

My mind with loosely hanging sails. 
Lies waiting the auspicious gales 

*' On either side, behind, before. 
The ocean stretches like a floor — 
A level floor of amethyst. 
Crowned by a golden dome of mist. 

Blow, breath of inspiration, blow ! 
Shake and uplift this golden glow ! 
And fill the canvas of the mind 
With wafts of thy celestial wind. 

"Blow, breath of song ! until I feel 
The straining sail, the lifting keel. 
The life of the awakening sea. 
Its motion and its mystery ! * * * 

Has this parable of the sailor no meaning 
for ns ? It may be that our voyage this past 
year has not been prosperous. 11 we have 
not been stormed or shipwrecked, we have 
at any rate been becalmed and have made 
little or no progress. But if we have been 
leading the Christian life truly we can catch 

♦Household Edition, p. 402. 



220 THANKSaiVING SERMONS 

the grateful toncli of breezes on the upper 
sails. If we know that we have added to 
our spiritual power, to our spiritual char- 
acter, to our spiritual service, we have the 
ground for the highest thanksgiving. No one 
has any truer right or fuller duty to say, 
'^I thank God." 

We should be grateful for personal 
power. Over us all He has pronounced an 
enabling act. We may not have all the power 
we could wish ; but we have enough to make 
us responsible, enough also to make us grate- 
ful. There is some strength in our arm, 
some in our mind, some in our heart. We 
have an influence. We are not zeros. There 
is joy in the sense of the ability that God 
gives us. Quite without regard now to what 
we do with our ability, there is joy in its 
possession. Men rejoice in physical strength 
even when they do not lift. They rejoice in 
mental strength even when they do not teach. 
They rejoice in social strength even when 
they pass their hours in voluntary solitude. 



THE APOSTLE 221 

If God lias so empowered ns that a cipher 
does not express our lives, we have a deep 
cause for thanksgiving. There is, there- 
fore, no one of us who can not repeat the 
first of this text, '^I thank Him that en- 
abled me." 

"We must go farther than this: personal 
power may be even disastrous unless it be 
guarded by personal character. We should 
thank God if in any degree He counts us 
faithful. It may be that in this case we have 
not much to be grateful for ; but surely there 
is something. At some time in this year you 
have heard God say, ^^Well done.'' Are we 
better than we were a year ago? Are we 
more just? Are we kinder? Are we more 
generous ? Is conscience keener and quicker ? 
Do we feel that God has helped us in the gen- 
eral movement and spirit of our lives to be 
more faithful? In brief, have we grown in 
grace and in knowledge of our Lord and 
Savior Jesus Christ? Then let us be grate- 
ful! If we become good only as we accept 



232 THAXKSamXG SEEMOXS 

the iUuiniiiatiorL of that Light that lighteth 
every man; if 

Every virtue we possess. 

And every victory won, 
And every thought of holiness 

Is His and His alone," 

then surely we have canse for thanksgiving. 
Shall we remember to thank Him for what 
He hath done for our bodies and forget to 
thank Him for what He hath done for our 
sonls ? If we can not feel that we have added 
to ourselves this past year the treasures of 
more Christlike character, let us turn our 
Thanksgiving Day into a time of fasting and 
of prayer in order that, ere its sun goes 
down, we may joyfully add the second ele- 
ment of the text: *^I thank Him that enabled 
me, even Christ Jesus our Lord, for that He 
counted me faithful/' 

"We should thank God, also, for personal 
service. When we have brought in this third 
cause of gratitude, how divine does our 
Thanksgiving become? If we conceive that 



THE APOSTLE 223 

there is something in the heart of God that 
corresponds to the grace of gratitude, we 
must suppose that it is exercised on the spir- 
itual plane. The three elements of the text 
are all seen in His relations to us. If this 
book teaches us aright, the thing for which 
God will be most grateful will be that we 
make room in our lives for Him to show His 
infinite power, His infinite faithfulness, His 
infinite service. Is not all this in harmony 
with the thought of His Trinity? The Fa- 
ther of Infinite Power ! The Son of Infinite 
Faithfulness, loving unto death ! The Spirit 
of Infinite Helpfulness, evermore expressing 
Himself in the tender moving of His people's 
hearts ! No thanksgiving is complete unless 
it brings in this third cause. If God is most 
grateful when He can do something for 
man, shall not man be most grateful when he 
can do something for God I If, then, in this 
past year you have been a partner in the 
divine work, how thankful you should be! 
Let the field thank God not simply because 



324: THAXXSamXG SEEMOXS p 

it gets sun and dew a^ : _ :: -: be- 
cause it gets a harvest. Let the viiir :_ nk 
God not only because it s" hs .izr : :ra the 
son and coaxes life from the i . : '^o 
because at last it is weighted : :h is 
fmit. So let man be gratefci i.:: :_ 7 e- 
canse Crod gives to him, but also, and espe- 
cially, because he has the privilege of giving 
to (3od. "I th/i^h Him that enabled me, 
even Chris: r :^ he Lord, for that He 
counted -:—- : i :h: i C'^^ding me to His 

service.' I: :-. L_e:: hi- himself to the 
lower plane he 11 1^ I it hard to be as 

grateful as he wo:h i ^i ily feel; if he rises 
to this higher plane he will find it difficult 
to get words strong enough to express his 
gratitude. It is just as one Bobert Davis 
has stated it in "The Better Prayer; 

"l thank Thee, Lord, for strength of arm 

To win my bread. 
And that beyond my need is meat 

For friend unfed. 
I thank Thee mnch for bread to Uve, 
I thank Thee more for bread to give. 



.>> 



THE APOSTLE 226 

*'l thank Thee, Lord, for snug-thatched roof 
In cold and storm. 
And that beyond my need is room 

For friend forlorn. 
I thank Thee much for place to rest. 
But more for shelter for my guest. 

I thank Thee, Lord, for lavish love 

On me bestowed. 
Enough to share with loveless folk 

To ease their load. 
Thy love to me I ill could spare, 
Yet dearer is Thy love I share.** * , 

This is gratitude for the opportunity of per- 
sonal service. Have you in the past year 
been allowed to help some one! Have you 
lifted a load from some weary heart? Have 
you made some sick-chamber brighter? 
Have you had the chance to give to God's 
work? Is some one now walking in the way 
of life because you were appointed to His 
service? If you are in real partnership with 
God in making the world better, thank Him 
truly. Make up your mind that in the points 

* The Outlook, February 27, 1909. 
15 



226 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

of personal power, personal character, per- 
sonal service, you shall have more cause for 
gratitude a year hence than you have now. 
As gratitude rises higher the whole move- 
ment of life will follow it upward until at 
last we lose ourselves in perfect praise be- 
cause we have reached the land of perfect 
power, perfect character, and perfect service. 



VIII 

THE FINAL CAUSE OF THANKS- 
GIVING 



THE FINAL CAUSE OF THANKS- 
GIVING 

Text: ''Give thanks at the remembrance of 
His holiness."— FsALM. xxx, 4. 

If the spirit of gratitude is to be awakened 
in the hearts of those who hear this Thanks- 
giving message, it will be necessary that we 
think together of some ground that is unmis- 
takably common to all. It is probably true 
that, if we wished to do so, we could find 
reason for thankfulness in the material side 
of our lives; for we have not been reduced 
to starvation or nakedness or homelessness. 
But without doubt there would be vast dif- 
ferences among us in this respect. Some of 
us have walked with steady feet up the 
ascent of prosperity, commanding ever a 
wider outlook upon the things of earth. 

229 



230 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

Others of us have slipped down the hill, 
which we had before climbed toward ease 
and independence, and the outlook shuts it- 
self in to dark and narrow valleys. If, there- 
fore, the word for this hour related to ma- 
terial prosperity, some would respond with 
quick gladness, while others would move to- 
ward the thought with sad reluctance. 

There would be like differences at the 
standpoint of physical well-being. Some of 
us have walked through the past year with 
a strong step; the bed of sickness has not 
held us for a day, nor even for an hour. 
Others of us have known inactivity; the 
couch has claimed us for weary weeks ; pain 
has tramped upon our nerves like some 
heartless beast. Still others have had a year 
in which joy and sorrow, success and failure, 
health and sickness have strangely mingled. 
But we have never been truly grateful until, 
like Job in the great epic with its movement 
from prosperity to adversity, and from ad- 
versity to prosperity again, we have seen all 



THE FINAL CAUSE 231 

states of life as comprehended in God's gra- 
cious plan. Smiling lips and moaning lips 
can both thank God only when the heart is 
carried np to where the contrasts in condi- 
tion are joined in some harmony of goodness. 

Nor would it be well to deal simply with 
the political causes for gratitude. In every 
large congregation there are men of all par- 
ties, and the pulpit can not well be turned 
into a platform. Some would deem our 
nation's prosperity a fact, others would 
deem it a myth; some would consider the 
changes in the world's map as indicating the 
advance of civilization, others would take 
them to mean the march of brutality. Some 
would feel that the tari:ff makes them rich; 
others that it keeps them poor. It is not the 
province of the preacher in his ordinary min- 
istrations to defend or attack any of these 
views, but to unite all partisans in the higher 
agreement of love and obedience as inspired 
by the divine holiness. 

From this you will see that if our thank- 



232 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

fulness is to be unanimous, its field must be 
above our differences in situation and in 
opinion. We must rise beyond the office; 
for the ledger often tells a story of hardship. 
We must move away from the hospital; 
for its register is one of anxiety and pain. 
We must leave the political headquarters; 
for from one we would hear a shout and 
from the other we would hear a wail. Our 
gratitude must go up toward Him who is the 
Owner of the earth, with its silver and gold ; 
toward Him who by the discipline of the 
world's suffering prepares men for the pain- 
less and deathless country; toward Him who 
presides over all our partisanship and is to 
be at last the Euler of all rulers. In this 
effort to gain a common and lofty ground 
for our gratitude, let us raise our thanksgiv- 
ing to the very highest thing and let us heed 
this ancient commandment, *^Give thanks at 
the remembrance of His holiness." 

You will note that this text connects 
thanksgiving with remembrance. Perhaps 



THE FINAL CAUSE 233 

more than any other day in the year this 
holiday is a day for a personal retrospect. 
The only date which would challenge its field 
in this respect is New Year's Day, and that, 
as even its name indicates, looks forward 
rather than backward; it is a day for re- 
solves rather than for remembrance. What- 
ever may be the reason for a man's grati- 
tude, it has to do in some form with his mem- 
ory. If he is thankful for his future it is 
because he throws into it the confidence that 
he has won from his past. This is true in 
reference even to the gratitude that a man 
would feel for the promised heaven. He who 
is thankful for worldly success gives thanks 
because he remembers; he who is thankful 
for bodily health gives thanks because he re- 
members; he who is thankful for political 
victory gives thanks because he remembers. 
And he who is thankful for the highest thing 
gives thanks at the remembrance of God's 
holiness. Thanking is simply remembering 
seasoned with justice and reverence; it is 



234: THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

thinking backward over the past and upward 
to God. It is thought climbing from the low- 
est to the highest. It is the mind traversing 
its old journeys, recognizing that God's com- 
pany was all along the ways, and lifting up 
here and there memorials of the divine holi- 
ness. The word of the psalmist thus states 
the process through which one must come to 
his real thanksgiving. 

But we have here given not merely the 
path along which gratitude comes, but also 
the goal which gratitude must reach. Un- 
less a man's heart arrives at God, the day is 
without meaning. A few years agf one of 
the governors of our States gave out a proc- 
lamation in which the name of God did not 
occur. The omission created much comment, 
and we need not wonder that it did. An athe- 
istic people could have no Thanksgiving Day. 
Such a day without God would be an eye 
with nothing to see, a voice with nothing to 
hear, a heart with nothing to love. It would 
be a road leading no whither, and every 



THE FINAL CAUSE 235 

walker on it would be an aimless traveler 

without a destination. It is true that men 
might have a Thanksgiving Day wherein 
they should pass from house to house and 
from man to man, giving praise to human- 
kind for help and friendship; such a day 
would not be without its value and its joy. 
But in the ordinary sense a Thanksgiving 
Day is impossible without a God. It is the 
conception that He broods in holiness over 
our lives that alone gave the day its historic 
beginning and continues it until now. If the 
time ever comes when the American people 
forget God the day will pass from the cal- 
endar and will become the mere relic of an 
abandoned faith. This psalmist- thinker 
leads us straight to this thought. True grati- 
tude can not stop short of God. So far as 
the purport of the day is concerned, as 
judged by the proclamation of our President 
and governors, the atheist, whether he be 
such in belief or only in the practical bearing 
of his life, is merely an onlooker. He views 



236 THANKSGIVING SERMONS 

the foolisli thankfulness of the people and is 
shut away from all the meaning of the holi- 
day. He can not bow before a blank ; he can 
not speak praise to insensibility; he can not 
be grateful to nothingness. If ever a man is 
the victim of his own unfaith, it must be on 
Thanksgiving Day. At that time no man can 
really get on unless he has a God. In deepest 
truth he can have no gratitude because it is 
impossible for him to obey the command, 
''Give thanks at the remembrance of His 
holiness. ' ' 

There are times when gratitude simply 
necessitates God. Then the thankful spirit 
opens a plain path into His presence. We 
have been accustomed to put more emphasis 
upon the need of God as a refuge for us in 
our sorrow than upon the need of Him as 
the only goal of our Thanksgiving. But in 
neither case can we find satisfaction without 
Him. A man walks out on a day when the 
earth seems wrapped in gloom and damp- 
ness. The frost has pinched off every bios- 



THE FINAL CAUSE 237 

som and every leaf. The very air seems his 
enemy and creeps about him like some 
stealthy foe, waiting for a chance to pierce 
him with sickness. The earth has taken on 
the color of the man's feelings. He is dis- 
appointed; his hopes have faded; his suc- 
cess has turned to failure ; a vast sorrow has 
fallen upon him. The relief and the only 
relief for that man in his adversity is God. 
Or another man walks out when the earth 
is robed in garments of glory. The sun has 
opened the blossoms and spread the leaves. 
The very air is his friend and fondles him 
with the caresses of summer breezes, pour- 
ing upon him streams of health and vitality. 
He is happy; his hopes are blooming. This 
man needs God as much as the other man. 
The one needs Him as a refuge in his 
trouble; the other needs Him as an object 
for His gratitude. The stoic may bear his 
grief in silence and may set himself against 
the shock of things. But the grateful man 
can not hold his gratitude in silence. Sor- 



238 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

row may exist without a refuge; but thank- 
fulness can not exist without an object. It 
is not, then, too much to say that this psahn- 
ist was right when he carried gratitude up to 
God. There is no stopping-place this side 
of the Infinite. If man is to be grateful at 
all for the thousand things that lie beyond 
human creation and human control, he must 
furnish himself with a God. His apprecia- 
tion can not hang in the midair, moving on 
to no object. When a man truly puts his 
feet on the way of gratitude he finds that he 
can not halt until he comes to God Himself. 
But this text does a more thorough work 
than we have yet mentioned. It connects 
gratitude with the processes of a sanctified 
memory. It insists that our thankfulness 
shall have reference to God ; and it demands 
that we shall take a large view of God and 
of His relations to our lives. Thanksgiving 
Day has been put at the close of the harvest 
season, when the fruits of the field have been 
gathered into the granaries and the song of 



THE FINAL CAUSE 239 

plenty is in the land. But let it be said again 
that we shall err if we allow our thought to 
remain in the fields and keep the day down 
until it lies in the dust. God gives us har- 
vests; but He gives us things more and 
higher. The treasures of humankind are not 
all gathered into barns or banks. It is not 
wise to think of God too exclusively in ref- 
erence to the fragments which move upon 
our lives at the prompting of His complete 
nature. God has power; we may be thank- 
ful. God has wisdom; we may be thankful. 
God has truth ; we may be thankful. God has 
love; we may be thankful. But the highest 
thing to be thankful for is that He has all 
these and everything else that is good. He 
has holiness, wholeness, completeness. His 
life keeps itself in infinite balance. It would 
be small comfort to have a God of power 
who was not also a God of love. Then we 
would have a tyrant on the throne of the 
worlds. It would be small comfort to have 
a God of wisdom who was not also a God of 



240 THAXKSGIVIXG SERMONS 

power— One wlio was an idealist witli end- 
less theories that He Himself could not pro- 
mote. Aye, and it would be a terrible thing 
to have a God of love who was not likewise 
a God of wisdom and a God of power— One 
who was merely a sentimentalist, tormented 
with the sense of His own helpless benevo- 
lence. But a God of holiness has all of these 
attributes and holds them in the balance of 
His perfect nature. What wonder is it, then, 
that the psalmist breaks out into the call, 
^^Give thanks at the remembrance of His 
holiness!" 

The human illustration is near at hand to 
help our thought. We all know men who make 
us think of God. One such may appear to 
your mind now. He has a strong arm, a cool 
judgment, a trained mind, a kind heart. He 
has in his finite sphere something of that 
poise of character that God has in His in- 
finite sphere. The attributes of power, truth, 
wisdom, and love belong to him. He moves 
close up to obedience to that staggering com- 



THE FINAL CAUSE 241 

mand, ''Be ye Holy; for I the Lord your God 
am holy." He makes no loud claims. He 
avoids the pharisaism of self-praise. He 
keeps free from the censoriousness of the 
privileged. He uses the ideal as a stimulus 
to himself rather than as a rebuke to others. 
Now let that man be related to your life. 
Within all proper limits he will lend you his 
power, guide you with his judgment, share 
with you his knowledge, comfort you with 
his friendship. For such a one you must 
be truly thankful. You know that whatever 
comes within the reach of his ability will be 
well done. For that man's being there is 
gratitude. You meet him on the street and 
you are glad. You see him in his home and 
you are glad. You merely know that he is, 
and in that knowledge you are glad. How 
thankful should be the community that has 
large numbers of such men— the well-bal- 
anced, wholesome, whole men. Christlike and 
Godlike! 

What, then, shall be our feeling when we 

16 



242 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

catch the infinite fact for which this illustra- 
tion stands? No man has ever yet discov- 
ered how to be glad and grateful unless his 
heart experiences the remembrance of the 
divine holiness. Gratitude is impossible 
without a God, and gratitude is feeble with- 
out a holy God. Life becomes great and rich 
and full and fearless only under the train- 
ing of that thought. Life is tame, stale, 
doubtful, and joyless save as it rests upon the 
foundation of infinite holiness. When you 
have taken that away the world is jarred and 
wrenched from its safety. It follows that 
gratitude on Thanksgiving can never rise to 
any height until one has learned to heed the 
call, **Give thanks at the remembrance of 
His holiness." 

The beauty and helpfulness of this sug- 
gestion lie in the fact that it does lift us 
above all untoward conditions and tempo- 
rary disappointments. So far as our trou- 
bles have arisen from our own willfulness 
and carelessness we may reproach ourselves ; 



THE FINAL CAUSE 243 

but so far as they have arisen from causes 
beyond our control we may trust in the holi- 
ness of God. This gratitude may be given 
in the time of prosperity. If the holy God— 
the Father of unfailing power, of unerring 
wisdom, of boundless love— has sent you suc- 
cess, it is well. You can be grateful. His 
holiness has moved upon you in sunshine and 
gladness ; it has bathed you in the joys of liv- 
ing ; it has exalted the year until it is in truth 
a tender memory. Your home is unbroken; 
your table has been spread with a sufficiency, 
if not with a plenty ; you and yours have not 
been crippled in the journey; goodness and 
mercy have followed the year until its paths 
have dropped with fatness; and above it all 
has been the sense of the divine and holy 
care expressing itself in all these gifts. Well 
may you *'give thanks at the remembrance 
of His holiness!" 

If it has been otherwise with any of you, 
your consolation is still the same. Both the 
prosperity and the adversity of good men 



244- THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

are joined in tlie harmony of God's holiness. 
Your home has been broken; your table has 
not suggested bounty; you and yours have 
been crippled in the journey; the paths of the 
year have been hard and lean; if you were 
to write one word across the calendar of the 
days since last Thanksgiving, it would be the 
word, ^^Stkuggle.'' But if you are God's 
child, the consolation is as much with you 
as with the son of prosperity. All the days 
have been in the holiness of God. If it were 
not so, every word of thanksgiving would 
freeze upon your lips ; every prayer of praise 
would halt in your throat ; and every feeling 
of trust would flee from your heart. The 
one refuge for the thought of the year, the 
one gracious solution of your problem, lies 
here: ^^Give thanks at the remembrance of 
His holiness." As long as you keep a holy 
God you keep an infinite reason for thank- 
fulness. How can we fret and pine when 
God is holy ! If it were possible to conceive 
of any life stripped of wealth, stripped of 



THE FINAL CAUSE 245 

friends, stripped of health, bare of all ma- 
terial and social blessings, and yet keeping 
in a true and serene heart a real faith in the 
holiness of God, that man could be carried 
on a hard cot, by strange hands, out of the 
morning's drizzle and cold, and could warm 
himself here at the glowing altar of the di- 
vine holiness. 

This, then, is a message for us all. It 
lifts us above our differences in situation, 
above our differences in partisan opinion, 
and brings us to a high and common sanc- 
tuary. The doorway to this consoling place 
is ever ajar. The message gathers you all 
out of your sadness and gladness, out of your 
failure and success, out of your sickness and 
health, out of your poverty and abundance— 
and it puts you all into the companionship 
of this text. It lifts, and lifts, and lifts until 
it lodges us all in the care of the divine com- 
pleteness. 

Whittier in ''The Eternal Goodness" 
uses the much quoted words: 



246 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS 

I see the wrong that round me lies, 

I feel the guilt within ; 
I hear, with groan and travail cries. 

The world confess its sin. 

Yet in the maddening maze of things 
And tossed by storm and flood. 

To one fixed trust my spirit clings ; 
I know that God is good/' * 

Even so! God is more tlian good! He is 
wise so that He can guide His goodness; and 
He is strong so that He can enforce His 
goodness. He is holy! That is the '* fixed 
trust" for the soul. No wonder Whittier 
soon writes the less familiar verse : 

"l dimly guess from blessings known 
Of greater out of sight. 
And, with the chastened Psalmist own 
His judgments, too, are right.'* 

The perfected spirit of this festival day- 
rests in a perfect God and gives thanks *'at 
the remembra,nce of His holiness." 

* Household Edition, p. 819. 



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